01

On Being Honest

When I’m honest I am recklessly nonchalant. I throw my unsettling truth around as if it were confetti. If someone asks how I’m doing, I tell the truth; if someone asks what’s wrong, I tell them all the gory details. So I go to my friend's house and try to distract myself. Tears start welling in my eyes, and I can’t suppress the feelings. When they ask what’s going on, the words pour out of my mouth and spill onto their carpet. Oh, I made quite a mess without meaning to. I shut down and stare at the mess I have made, trying to create a plan to clean up and leave no trace that it ever happened. But I rub the stain I created instead of dabbing it with soda water like I was supposed to. Now the stain has spread, I made it worse. They will never forgive me for the mess I caused, will they? For many years I was a polite houseguest, always agreeable, always lying about what was going on. But they asked, so didn’t they want to know?

More often than not, people don’t want the truth, they want the short version, the positive spin, the snippet. But I don’t know how to do that anymore. I don’t know how to water down what I’m feeling and even when I try it seems to be too much anyway. Even when I try to water it down or make things seem more okay than they are, my hyper-expressive face cannot hide how I’m feeling. My words alone could convince them, but the look in my eyes is never something I’ll be able to fake. 

After a while, I got too tired to always clean up my messes, and I didn’t want the constant and nagging guilt for expressing how I felt to the people who love me. So instead, I ruin my carpet, I make a mess of my things, and I try and try to get all the bad out so that I never have to worry about putting someone else’s home in disarray. Only, I don’t live alone anymore, it’s not just me I have to worry about. So I pick everything up, and do my best to make everything seem cleaner than it was the night before. I’m not sure if it’s better to be thought of as a mess or a liar.

I think my best solution is to attempt to handle the chaos on my own, but to not become a liar in order to remain an image that isn’t authentic to me anyway. I will read up on the best ways to get out stains, I will always carry cleaning spray, and I will make sure those who love me know my feelings have a tendency to overflow. I’ll prepare and be transparent and always always make sure to not let everything build up. My intensity seems to come off as more of a monstrosity when I have kept everything neat and tidy for many days. I will allow my feelings their space and I will be honest--but will learn how to find balance. Maybe now I can go back to being a good houseguest.

02

The Man in the Rain

An Unspoken Understanding

When I was fourteen, I decided to start going on runs around the neighborhood. But I had one condition—it had to be raining. I would put my headphones in, and place my phone in a ziplock bag. I always loved the rain. As a child I would stand on the tree stump in the front yard in my pajamas and let the rain pour over me, for as long as my parents let me. It made me feel connected, grounded, and alive. So when I was fourteen, I felt the same way, and would embrace the rain, one foot after another, as I continued down the street.

There was a house I had always admired—up on a hill, painted red, with a pond in the front yard. I always was envious of that pond and longed to swim in it on hot days, despite the murkiness. Every single time I would go on a walk I would take a few seconds, look at the red house on the hill, and envision myself living somewhere like that when I grew up. Nothing fancy, but filled with character. It was interesting though, in walking past it every day I had never seen anyone who lived there. Must not be outside much, I thought to myself.

The very first run I went on in the rain I came across the red house and slowed my pace. To my surprise, after years and years, I had finally seen the owner. He was a man in his 70s or 80s, sitting on a plastic lawn chair, with his head looking to the sky and his eyes closed, getting soaked in the pouring rain. I don’t know if I had ever, or will ever, see anyone so at peace. He didn’t see me, but I felt like we understood each other in a way that I couldn’t really emulate with words, it was more of a feeling. I kept going.

On my way back, I passed him again, in the same spot. But this time his eyes were open and he was looking right at me. He nodded and waved, as did I. I paused for a moment wondering if I should stop and introduce myself, but I got shy and kept going.

Him and I seemed to continue this routine for the next four years—It would start raining, I would lace up my sneakers, he would bring out his lawn chair, and we would meet again. It became a sacred tradition in my eyes, us waving and nodding, like we both knew. What did we know? At least that we both liked the rain.

Then I moved away for college. When I came back for the summer it started raining, so I laced up my sneakers and ran as fast as I could to the red house, and he wasn’t there. And that was that, no more man on his lawn chair enjoying the rain. The runs happened in solitude and I made peace with it, but I never forgot about him.

This year when I was visiting my parents I ran into a couple on a walk, who expressed they just moved in to a house halfway down the road. I said, “Wait. The house with the pond? The red one?” They nodded, and expressed how much they loved living there and the neighborhood. I then went on to tell the new inhabitants of the home the story of the man in the rain, I learned he passed away, and they learned the deep admiration he had for the rain.

03

Penance

For made up sins

I’ve always grappled with the reason that I struggle to look up to people. Inspiration turns to envy and envy becomes an immeasurable force that blinds me from every positive notion I’ve ever had. I feel the need to maneuver my way into being a better version of them, someone greater, more remarkable, more interesting. If I don’t, won’t I just sink into nothingness? I obsess over being the greatest at one thing and when I realize I cannot, or no longer wish to try, I wander into a deep oblivion and feel as if I have lost all my purpose. What I was fixated on being the best at became everything and when I abandoned it, I felt like I was nothing. 

I often feel as if I need to be truly great at something in order to have value, as if my worth is measured off of a scale that I am determining (with very unfair parameters). It’s not a wish to be admired by others, but only to feel that of myself. When I finally get off of the hamster wheel (spinning round and round, stuck in a loop) I walk myself right onto another. I desperately want to get off the wheel and out of the cycle, but I want to matter to myself more.

Do you know the story of Sisyphus? Hades punishes him by sentencing him to a life of pushing a boulder up a steep hill--endlessly and eternally. When I chastise myself I follow closely behind Sisyphus with a boulder of my own. But my punishment was not one of Hades, but me needing to have as large of a punishment. Only in my version, I need to pass him, because I need to be greater, even with my curse deriving from my own desperation to pay penance for sins I invented in my mind.

04

Crawling and Bleeding

I am crawling out of my skin. Pain-stakingly grasping at the cement path that lays before me, hands bleeding, eyes burning--how can I be pretty if I’m covered in bruises? 

I have fallen and instead of choosing to get up, I drag my tired body across the ground and whale out when my skin gets cut up. Have I done this? Am I the one causing myself so much pain?

Unfortunately, I know the answer.

It’s always been me. But how can it be me if it doesn’t feel like me? I look in the mirror as if I am staring at a stranger. God, do I pick her apart. Her eyes are too small and her cheeks are too full, she has this vacant look on her face that some take as ditsiness, and I take as a lack of anything substantial going on beyond her face, some say pretty, I say pathetic.

I am the villain in my story and how on earth can I get any sympathy if I am the one who plunged the knife into my own back--I didn’t consider I had done it because I had no idea I was capable of having such a reach. But I did, I do, I hurt and ache.

I long to be the pretty that everyone thinks I am. I long to feel connected to the one on the other side of the mirror. I want us to no longer be opposing forces, because with both of us pushing on the glass it is getting dangerously close to shattering, and that would be quite the mess to clean up. 

I want to be more than a beautiful girl, but when I was taught that that beauty is the most anyone can offer, how can I not obsess, fixate, and scrutinize myself to no end.

I want there to be an end to it, not me being pretty as the start of a sentence whenever someone tries to make me feel better.

My name is Molly Lesnick and I graduated from the University of Vermont with a Bachelor’s in Sociology in 2021. I have been writing academically and for myself since I was ten years old. I want to normalize and celebrate the feelings that come with being human.