One thing I haven't been able to give up in gutting certain things from my life is black coffee. I buy a specific kind of coffee to help with my acid reflux and it is amazing:

Boomi Premium Single Origin Instant Coffee Powder - Medium Roast, 100% Arabica, Mold & Mycotoxin Free, Low Acid - 3.5oz Tin 

If alcohol had a way of shutting me down so that everything inside of me started blissfully mumbling, coffee has a way of waking up every thought I have and making anything seem possible. The price that comes with it, though, is amplified anxiety and a self-awareness I'd rather not experience. But, at the same time, there is a smattering of joy that, in those moments, I am very much glad to be alive. I am not hungry, I am not a disaster, I am not all the things I used to rely on alcohol to help soften…in those moments.

My beautiful boy turned 14 in June and I love him so very much. I often wish I had known him from his birth, but I'm still so grateful he came into my life when he was four. He is such a sweet tuxedo cat and my soulmate and he's helped me with certain things in life, like giving up drinking and deciding to live a much healthier lifestyle. 

I've had times where I returned to bad habits before but I think this time I'm sticking to changing, both because of my cat and because you can get away with a lot when it comes to your health at 20, 30, 40, even 50, but once you hit your mid-50s it's not such smooth sailing. I never really rebelled as a child or teen or even as an adult, but my mom's philosophy towards food and other things held on so tightly to me that I wanted to let go in college and then when I moved out on my own. 

But it turns out that sometimes mothers are right about a lot of things...not ALL by any means, but a lot. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in her late 30s and that changed how she saw and treated life. We had always had healthy meals and things like that, but after her diagnosis she locked down completely on the best ways to eat and she became more religious and more serious. 

My parents are super conservative and I'm super liberal and that makes for some really challenging times. But as I have gotten older I realize that even though their views shock me sometimes, their advice and attempts to help me come from a very good place. 

They take walks every day, eat impeccably and live quite austerely. I'm not sure I can go quite that distance, but I do know I don't want to play around with my health anymore. I also want to work on being a better daughter.

 

There are some books you feel like you could have written yourself (under different circumstances and with talent and skill) and Thrall by Rebecca Mahoney is one of them...oh my gosh: it is so good and surprisingly creepy!

My favorite passages so far:

My mother always said I’d get eaten alive, out here in the world. Of course, every time she said it, “the world” meant a different thing. The bus stop. The crosswalk. College, eventually. When I was little, I always thought reassuring her was just a matter of proving that I was  capable of navigating the wicked snares of the grocery store parking lot. But what my mother was holding on to was deeper, like it so often is. What she was afraid of was never bus stops, or crosswalks, or campuses. To her, they were all the same: a lottery wheel, always turning. And every time she or I left the house, it turned again and again.

I was never afraid of the wheel. Maybe it was the fact that she’d raised me in a layer of Bubble Wrap, but I’ve always found it romantic that there’s no real life without chance. And if all the terrible things waiting for me—in the grocery store, at the crosswalk, or here, on our campus—if all of them came down to bad luck, then that was more comforting than scary. There’s no real malice in that. Whatever could happen to me, it would never be personal. 

I tried to tell her that, once. But that was never how she saw it. To her, the wheel had intention. It had teeth.

And this passage too:

Lucy was miles away from anyone who would know this about her, but there was nothing that could stun her into compliance quite like a beautiful*girl wielding a certain, effortless competence. She had, rather famously, fallen for her ex after listening to her order a sandwich.

I'm continuing to thoroughly enjoy this book and the fact that it doesn't romanticize vampirism (though I've never turned away a good vampire-ridden novel if everyone involved is doing so willingly). 

The author is, at least up to where I'm at, addressing the side effects of being bitten as well as the predatory nature of a vampire (or at least, this one) and the results are chilling, both literally and figuratively. 

This in the third dark academia book I've read in a row and it's interesting to see how very different it is from the other two.The isolation the main character in Thrall is experiencing is way too familiar.

(*I would like to add that 'beautiful' is relative and I'm thinking here the word could be used shallowly, but I don't think it is. I have never been overly smitten by someone just because of their looks...once you get to know someone better, their looks change sometimes...a beautiful on the outside person can show they are not so much that way inside and someone who is unconventionally attractive can outshine everyone else in the room. I will say, though, that I can be easily overwhelmed by someone I find attractive and want to bolt out of the room like the character Nate in the first episode of Ted Lasso when he encounters Hannah Waddingham's character).

I can't wait to watch more of Prime's original Ride or Die when I get home tonight. I'm halfway through and adore this show so much, so far. The friendship chemistry is melting my heart and the humor is easing some of my anxiety and the wild parts have sparked my interest. 

I don’t know if I can explain this without sounding odd, but I recently presented a class celebrating Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday and after I finished all the research and after the class was over, even though I think the class went pretty well I just felt so despondent over her life and how she’s misinterpreted by different biographers, depending on who’s writing about her…

 Like Norman Mailer’s work on her is just dreadful…not all male biographers of course but a good amount of them tend to treat her as an object or possession instead of a human being. I called my class Marilyn Monroe at 100: icon, intellectual and influencer, but later I worried that I saw things that aren’t there. 

I believe firmly that she loved to read and was much smarter than she came across and yet some biographies treat her with such a one track mind. 

A couple hours after my class was over I discovered a book that I never saw when I was doing my research. It’s called The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Sarah Churchwell. I feel like she might be addressing this in her book:

The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe

Monroe

Sarah Churchwell

Kindle Highlights 

It is not just the case that biographies of Marilyn Monroe disagree about the answers to charged questions about her life, her character and her experiences. They often do not acknowledge that other versions even exist.

(Location 69)

Marilyn has gone from sex symbol to a symbol of mourning, from a promise of the liberation of sex to a cautionary tale about the dangers of loneliness and spinsterhood.

(Location 90)

Churchwell dedicates a large portion of it to tearing apart biographers like Norman Mailer, arguing that they projected their own fantasies onto her rather than treating her as a thinking human being. She calls out how Mailer, in particular, mythologized her to fit his own narrative of American masculinity and victimhood.

Reading about how she was distorted can feel almost as violating as reading about the distortion itself. It's a heavy read because it forces you to confront just how cruel the industry and the media were to her intelligence. 

She spent her whole life trying to show people that side of her, and she was often laughed at for it. 

I still have more to say...

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is one of those books I would hug to my heart if I still read print copies, but I feel no less strongly about it just because it's through my Kindle.It's one of those titles that hits hard because even if it doesn't exactly reflect your life experiences it echoes them enough to hurt pretty, pretty hard.

This passage, for instance:

Such generosity, such thoughtfulness. Carolyn was my friend. 

Yet I loved Ginny. 

At the time I was unable to recognize the nature of my feelings. I’d had schoolgirl crushes on other young women, yet I was struck quickly and suddenly with what amounted to true love when it came to Ginny. I loved the sound of her voice, the curve of her mouth, her long monologues at night while she brushed her hair and she told me about a book she’d read or a painting she’d seen. This might be why she has lingered in my thoughts for so long: because she was my first love. It was a one-sided, silent love, and yet it was true. 

This might also be why I sometimes feel I understand Edgar’s grief better than Carolyn ever did. Both of us were left brokenhearted and bereft.

And there is another passage that is so eerily similar it feels like sharing the passage would be almost the same as sharing something way too private about myself or the person it reminds me of so much. I've been experiencing a lot of emotional things this month so this read is packing an extra wallop of feelings and mental time travel.

(later):

Oh my gosh!...I've gotten much further into The Bewitching and I feel strongly that I should list a trigger warning about incest (in a different subplot than the above)...to me this is no longer the beautiful, special book I started out reading. I've got stop getting excited about books until I've actually finished them.

(later later):

I ended up with very mixed feelings about this book, but I still really treasure those earlier passages, mentioned above.

 

It has hit me surprisingly hard how much I already miss the show The Way Home..the last time I was saddened by a program ending before its time was when Fringe left the air in 2013. (Actually I still haven't quite gotten over Fringe being canceled). 

Ever since I read Hanging Out With Cici by Francine Pascal in middle school I've thought how neat and even helpful it would be for someone to be able to go back in time and meet their mom when she was younger. Very few women I know don't have complicated relationships with their mother, no matter how much love may be there. 

Besides my being a huge scifi-time travel geek, that complication is a huge part of why I adored The Way Home so much...and was thrilled that my mom watched it with me, in another state, with us calling each other during commercials.

 

as seen on ebay

I've loved Marilyn Monroe films for as long as I can remember and the more I read about her the more I like what I read:

“Marilyn loved animals; she was drawn to all living things. She would spend hundreds of dollars to try to save a storm damaged tree, and would mourn its death. She welcome birds, providing treehouses in food for the many species that lived in her lawn; she worried about them and bad weather. She was worried about dogs and cats. She once had a dog that was by nature contemplative, but she was convinced he was depressed. She did her best to make him play, and that depressed him even more; on the rare occasions when he did an antic pirouette, Marilyn would kiss him and hug him, delirious with joy”- Norman Rosten (poet and friend of Marilyn)

What on earth does it mean when your comfort show used to be Golden Girls and now it's Dexter? Does it mean there's something wrong with me that I'm on my fourth re-watch of Dexter in five years and I'm just as captivated and invested as ever.

But it's not the dark moments that haunt me as much as ones like this scene, where Dexter struggles with understanding human connections:

 I can't say enough good things about Grant Ginder's So Old, So Young, but I will try next time I post...

She began to think about her own life, about how little she had seen or accomplished, and suddenly felt incredibly young, like she had been thrust into something without being properly prepared for it, even though she had ostensibly received the same preparations as everyone else. She felt as though when she looked around her everyone else’s life was starting up, while she was sitting at her desk, writing about men’s colognes, waiting for something to happen.

This^^^ and so many other passages hit hard:

But whenever Marco looked at her she felt a hot, suffocating embarrassment. She thought about the night of Alison Liu’s birthday, where she had gotten too drunk, too hopeful that her mistakes could so easily be corrected with a single late-night confession. The sides of her face burned and she scrubbed harder. She wanted to disappear. 

Two days after Alison’s party, Marco had called her—she remembered how she was walking home from the subway when she saw his name on her screen. She thought about answering it, but then the call rolled over to voicemail and she immediately deleted his number from her phone, along with the message he had left her. She wanted to pretend that night had never happened—she convinced herself that, if she obliterated all signs of it, she could. 

She listened to songs about being strong and independent, and she stopped smoking so many cigarettes, and she spent time with people she loved, and she bought self-help books with images of inspiring mountains on their covers. She was an infrequent user of social media, but now she began posting pictures of herself having fun, and paired them with thoughtful, cryptic captions. A shot of her on the Brooklyn Bridge, and under it a lyric from the Cranberries. A picture of her smiling in Sheep Meadow, with a line from Rilke. None of it worked—instead she felt as if she was going through the breakup a second time, though in this case it was Marco who was breaking up with her. She saw that her choice hadn’t been deliberate and well-thought-out, but rather a failure of imagination—she had been so focused on keeping her life exactly as it was, without realizing that so much of that life was Marco. 

To that end, she hadn’t really made a choice at all so much as she had stood back and allowed inertia to handle things for her. She stopped buying herself luxury bath bombs and listening to Taylor Swift—she began to think that buying luxury bath bombs and listening to Taylor Swift were signs that you were a sucker who was depressed.

And:

Nina smiled, even though she felt like she was going to cry. She and Carol both knew that there were no friends she could invite over, because if there were, Nina wouldn’t have FaceTimed Carol in the first place. 

She couldn’t understand what made her so repellent. She considered herself to be reasonably smart, she was very good at her job, and now that she had money she always put effort into wearing cute outfits. But when she was around people in social settings, she lost all sight of those things and felt instead a sort of crippling anxiety, this insufferable need to impress and be liked by them that she couldn’t seem to quash. She heard herself say ridiculous things, and immediately afterward would see herself through everyone else’s eyes. She was a try-hard and a loser—the sort of person that people talked about as soon as she left the room, and whose jokes always killed the momentum of a group text. Things weren’t supposed to be this way. She was supposed to be like her mother, someone whose life was overloaded with love and who felt burdened by too many dinner invitations. She was supposed to have someone to confide in, and instead she was thirty-five and alone.

It's been a while since I read a book where so much of it resonates with me, even if there are characters within in that are not always likable. Ironically, Nina seems to be the least liked by her friends, but she is the character I relate to the most, even though she appears it in relatively little compared to the rest of the characters. How she comes across is so completely separate from who she actually is that my heart hurts for with understanding and something I can't completely define.

d…

Maybe, sometimes, you think you are over a thing or a person or an event and then you realize that it's possible that it's more like whatever or whoever was bothering you didn't go away, but, instead, is lying dormant within you.

This occurred to me the other day when a friend told me that someone we both know, but haven't seen in a while, invited a bunch of common acquaintances to an event she is performing at in a few weeks. My friend knows how I used to feel about this person, but perhaps she forgot or just didn't think or figured I'm over her, when she informed me that all of them are going. 

The sting of tears and the hurt I felt at not being included shocked me, even though it's for the best I don't go anyway. Truly, I thought I had put all of my ridiculous, over-the-top feelings behind me. I still think I have. But I can't deny that I also have become very good at pushing emotions down, like so far down they appear and feel non-existent.

For the first time in years I no longer find myself mad at the world (or, more specifically, the people within the world who are turning it into a shitake mushroom show)...I just feel rather numb, with occasional tears, but not many. 

I haven't cried when I shouldn't (i.e. at work) in a long while and that is a good thing. I've been crush-free for three plus years now and I have armored my heart so strongly I doubt I will ever "like like" someone ever again. I feel like that old Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb."

My dream life is more active and vivid than my real life and if I see people in them I used to be fond of in real life there is a nice detachment to it that there never was when I actively liked them, if that makes sense. I found myself relieved to realize I was not in denial or anything like that, that my dreams were telling me, this is now in the rearview mirror and you are okay...in that area of your life.

As much as I can be very fearful of my dreams (and nightmares) I occasionally have very pleasant ones...last night I had my recurring dream (less and less these days, though) where I see my grandmother and get to hang out with her again.  My recurring mall dream felt less scary and more airy and I even had a dream where I got to play softball with Karen Carpenter (not a sad dream at all).

I  think you give away so much when you give away your heart, but I'm not sure the alternative is a much better option...just one I'm taking right now until I have surer footing in life.

One thing I'm sure of is that I'm not in denial about any past feelings for any past person. And this makes me think of one of many favorite Golden Girls scenes (I can pretty much apply any Golden Girls episode to different aspects of life and immediately feel better).

Dorothy: Rose, I am not in denial.

Rose: Yes, you are. You’re just denying you’re in denial.

Dorothy: Rose, honey, I am not denying I’m in denial.

Rose: If you’re not denying you’re in denial, then you’re in denial.

Dorothy: Look, fluffhead. Why should I deny being in denial? I never said I was in denial, YOU are the one who said I was in denial, and don’t you deny it.

Last night I had a very brief, but still kind of sweet, totally not unpleasant dream, something I rarely have. I wish now I'd written about it in my dream journal, right after waking. But I didn't so all I have left is a fleeting sensation rather than the bittersweet, but wonderful overwhelming-ness of it when I first woke.

I've always thought it looks so gentle and soul-stirring when someone kisses someone else on the top of their forehead or crown of their hair. I think it is very tender and that is how it was in my dream, with the person doing it to me, creating a loveliness I wanted to hold on to forever.

I've recently re-connected with an old friend. X and I first met in 1993 and were good friends for years, then kind of lost regular touch after he got married. 

He and his wife are no longer together, having divorced last year. My parents always had this mentality (and still have it) that married people cannot and should not be friends with the opposite gender. They are so adamant about this that even though I strongly disagree and believe that men and women can be "just friends," I think I let their attitude affect mine.

He and I have been texting and talking on the phone and he sent me a picture from the 90s, when we hung out together and had a lot of fun, going to the movies, amusement parks and day trips. After he sent it to me, he told me that he got it from a photo album his mom kept of the two of us. "My mom always liked you," he said.

This hit the part of me hard that always wanted to be "normal."  I guess maybe this didn't surprise me too much as his mother was always so nice to me. I still remember having a lovely time sitting at the same table with her at my friend's wedding.

Hearing X say this made me feel good, but also made me think that I think I always longed for the "extended family" part of normal more than the boyfriend/husband part of normal. And even though I couldn't want the normal that I wanted to want or if I had been someone who wanted that, there would still have been the "what's wrong with him that he says he likes me?" aspect.

I think if X and I had gotten married (he told me his mother actually told him she had hoped we would) that I would have gotten along well with his large and friendly family. His father was a little gruff, but still kind and X’s brothers and sisters always had such a welcoming aura. They all made me re-think that not all families are terribly dysfunctional.

A lot of people possibly hesitate to marry someone if that someone's family is "too much" or a stereotypical version of nosy, interfering and critical. Me? I liked X’s family so much I wanted to want to feel deep things for him. Because we were good friends and he loved dancing and cats as much as I do I thought I could will it to happen.

I looked at the picture he sent a lot the other night and I couldn't help but notice I looked happy, possibly even "radiant," a word no one ever could use to describe me now. I have no illusions about my looks, but that picture shows a me that is nowhere near as unattractive as I am now.

If I had a time machine, there are so many things I would want to go back and change or re-live. But then I remember how incredibly hard I tried (like really, really tried!) to conjure up romantic and emotional feelings that would have led to a good relationship and marriage and I know I just didn't have them.

One thing I would change in the 90s, though, is tell X that if I could have liked any man that way, it would have been him. He didn't know about me back then and I was so caught up in fear and trying to play a version of me that was a lie that I forgot about how lying hurt him. 

Years later,when I did come out to him, he said he wished he had known sooner, that it would have explained so many things and that, like me (but in a different way) he wouldn't have wanted things to be a way they just couldn't.

I have always had a very vivid and intense dream life so when I have nightmares they are actually quite horrible and when I have good dreams they are the kind of good dreams that are so good they hurt way more than the bad ones.

Last night I dreamed about someone I haven't seen in about 25 years. She and I used to be friends and I really, really liked her though I never would have ever shared that with her. That she appeared and everything felt so real and colorful only added to the weirdness of it all. I haven't consciously thought of her in a long time so that added a surprise element as well.

The most bizarre aspect is that I when I got up to use the bathroom and return to bed I would fall back asleep and the dream would continue. That almost never happens. If I didn't know better, between the vividness and continuity of it all I would swear it actually happened in real life.

What stung most, though, and worse than any nightmare could hit hard...was that she hugged me and I could feel it so intently that the sensation stayed with me hours after I woke.

 

When I first read Fifteen by Beverly Cleary back in the early, early 80s I would find myself frequently closing the book and looking at the cover (the 1980 Laurel Leaf Edition, specifically). Even at ten years old I knew this was the normal I was going to be expected to want in a just a few years:

I’m going to meet a boy, Jane Purdy told herself, as she walked up Blossom Street toward her babysitting job. Today I’m going to meet a boy. If she thought it often enough as if she really believed it, maybe she actually would meet a boy even though she was headed for Sandra Norton’s house and the worst babysitting job in Woodmont. If I don’t step on any cracks in the sidewalk all the way there, Jane thought, I’ll be sure to meet a boy. But avoiding cracks was silly, of course, and the sort of thing she had done when she was in the third grade. She was being just as silly as some of the other fifteen-year-old girls she knew, who counted red convertibles and believed they would go steady with the first boy they saw after the hundredth red convertible. Counting convertibles and not stepping on cracks were no way to meet a boy.

Maybe, when she finished her job with Sandra, she could walk down to Nibley’s Confectionery and Soda Fountain and sit at the counter and order a chocolate Coke float; and if she sipped it very, very slowly, a new boy might happen to come in and sit down beside her. He would be at least sixteen—old enough to have a driver’s license—and he would have crinkles around his eyes that showed he had a sense of humor and he would be tall, the kind of boy all the other girls would like to date. Their eyes would meet in the mirror behind the milk shake machines, and he would smile and she would smile back and he would turn to her and look down (down—that was important) and grin and say . . 

I also knew, though, despite how young I was, that I was more drawn to the girl on the cover than the boy, though I didn't know why that pull towards others of my own gender existed within me...and wouldn't know the reasons for quite some time ahead.

Because of my growing up in the 70s and 80s, certain kinds of knowledge were completely inaccessible to me. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off as a preteen later on life when "Googling" became possible. Just perhaps...not knowing things would not have created such a sense of isolation and overwhelming "what on earth is wrong with me?" thoughts.

Even now, even at the age of 55, I still want to want what is normal, what society not only approves of, but still shoves down the throats of anyone who isn't straight.

I want to want what is normal, what I'm supposed to want, truly, but I just don't have the feelings expected of me. And it's taken me decades to realize I am not a bad person because of that. If I am a bad person (which I often think I am) it is for entirely different reasons.

Back in the beginning of 2025 I decided to do dry January and then went from month to month still going dry. I slipped in my intentions in September and started my two drinks a night habit again, though "habit" seems way too innocuous a word for something that can cause so many serious problems. 

Last week I decided enough was enough and that I could kid myself all I wanted about alcohol not being that bad or alcohol probably not causing cancer if I made up for the bad in other areas of my life. I want to be healthy for my cat and I told him I would not be drinking any more and even though I know he doesn't understand my words I still find it works to be accountable to him. I love him more than anything and want to be able to take care of him. And he is the only being I know to whom I have never lied.

Another thing about drinking is that I managed to kid myself about what is heavy drinking and what isn't. I'm not going to say I thought two drinks a night was harmless, but I also never stopped to think that any more than 8 drinks a week for women is indeed heavy drinking. That woke me up and I'm hoping that this time sticks, even if I'm starting from scratch all over again.

...

It's the next day and I just want to add that I feel like I'm doing much better without wine, both health-wise and mentally. Instead of using alcohol to relax at night I am now taking an herb called Passionflower and drinking oat milk with it. The combo is not as potent as wine but I still relax (well as much as I'm capable of relaxing) and feel a bit float-y.

I’m watching an old episode of Everybody loves Raymond and Marie has confessed that she likes Amy better than Debra because Amy is a virgin… Marie even goes as far as to say that Amy is “pure” and a “good girl.” (I think the writers were trying to show antiquated Marie’s thinking, but I’m not sure that was the point but if it was, the topic was kind of clumsily handled if you ask me.)

A woman’s goodness has absolutely nothing to do with whether she has had sex or not. I’m a virgin and I don’t consider myself pure at all. I’ve done things in my life I’m truly and deeply ashamed of, even if I definitely would change them if I could. 

Meanwhile, there are women who aren’t virgins who are good people. How on earth did we develop this mindset that a woman’s purity is dependent on whether she’s had sex or not and how come this isn’t applied to men?

Virginity is not a moral achievement. It’s a neutral state. A person who has had sex has not lost goodness; a virgin has not gained it. Morality is about how we treat others, with kindness, honesty and respect, not about what we do or don’t do with our own bodies.

The “purity” myth lets people confuse a lack of sexual experience with moral character, and it’s harmful to everyone, including the people it claims to “praise.”

I recently discovered a book written in 1890 called The Young Visiters. Daisy Ashford penned the novel as 9 year old and later, in her 20s, shared it for publication, through a rather complicated, but interesting series of circumstances. 

Part of the book's success in selling millions of copies had to do with a child’s bluntness in describing adult vulnerabilities.

What strikes me most is not the book itself (although it is uncannily mature for a child of her age to write, misspellings and all) but what the writer said years later:

 “I can never feel all the nice things that have been said about ‘The Young Visiters’ are really due to me at all, but to a Daisy Ashford of so long ago that she seems another person."

I am by no means a Jane Austen fan, yet I find this book fascinating and actually kind of funny:

from Kindle Highlights:

When I say “ruin,” I don’t mean the way you might, say, ruin a silk blouse by chasing a cat into a juniper bush. I mean the way you might ruin the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by telling someone that Bonnie Tyler originally meant it to be about vampires (this is true). I’ve now upended whatever uncomplicated associations you had with this song, and you’ll never be able to hear it without thinking of vampires again, but I’ve made it much more interesting. Anyway, English professors have lots of tools at our disposal for ruining your favorite books, and the way I prefer to ruin Pride and Prejudice is by pointing out how literature trains women to spend their time changing assholes into sensitive men instead of overthrowing the patriarchy.

.....>

my students like me even though I ruin it. They tell me I’m “relatable” and “super sweet and nerdy” (this was in an anonymous online review, and honestly, how very dare you). They also once said I was “the best birth control.” (That was when I was hugely, embarrassingly pregnant. Like, I texted a picture of myself to one of my best friends and instead of responding with “you’re glowing” or even “so excited,” she wrote back, “you look like a UFO.”) The birth control comment is not really related to my habit of ruining Pride and Prejudice, but I think it gives you a sense of what it’s like to study Jane Austen with me. That is, taking a class with me is all fun and games until you’re hugging your roommate in the English department lounge because you realized that you’ve been spending your time and energy and attention on taciturn or emotionally unavailable people, believing they are going to turn out to be slow-burn romantic heroes like Mr. Darcy—when really, they are often just assholes.