Happy Birthday to Me

I turned 31 yesterday, which would absolutely be unremarkable except for the fact that Justin, my big brother, died when he was 31. That’s a friendly way of putting it, though. Justin took his own life at 31. There, that’s more realistic. I’ve been dreading my birthday for almost the whole year. I was super […]

Did You Miss Me? I Sure Did.

My last post on HFOW was a year and a half ago. I don’t know about you, but I feel like some big shit went down between December of 2019 and July of 2021? Like maybe something fundamentally shifted worldwide for a whole year? I just can’t quite put my finger on it… If you […]

Phase One: Complete. Enter Phase Two

The first two weeks of this transition from Zoloft to Paxil were wild. The first day I took Paxil I was exhausted. But every day after that? I guess I can finally understand what mania looks like. My only emotion for the first two weeks was anxiety. I couldn’t empathize. I couldn’t feel happiness or sadness […]

Head On Over to Entropy

Happy Publication Day! Please make your way over to Entropy to read my essay, “The Last Family Vacation.” Let me know what you think!

New Year, New Me–dications

TW: Self-harm, mental health issues. Generally speaking, the best part of the New Year is the chance to make all these promises to ourselves about the person we want to be and then promptly break them the second someone brings in a chocolate cake into work. This year, however, one of my self-improvement resolutions is […]

My Christmas List, 2019

Here are the things I want this year for Christmas, in no particular order: A remote control that switches my perseverating into focus on a task that I actually need to get done as opposed to whatever inane thing is occupying my headspace. It’d be really nice if I could, say, revise the pages I want […]

Functionally, Consistently Depressed

I used to be super sensitive to medication. When I was on Effexor, I was on the lowest recommended dose, and even then I developed a severe allergy to the drug that almost made me hospitalize myself. Since then, I’ve been on Zoloft. It’s been about ten years now, and I can happily say it […]

Oh Hey

It’s me. I know what you’re thinking. It’s been forever, Whitney. We’ve totally forgotten about you. And I get it. I’ve largely forgotten about the blog, too, but mostly because the cycle of grief and work and depression has really made doing something fun like this seem absolutely impossible. But guess what? I’m not too depressed […]

Good Riddance, 2018

I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet on the blog this year. At first, I was busy trying to piece my life back together after my father’s suicide, and now I’m just trying to find the pieces of myself after my brother’s suicide. I have no hope of putting them back together. It’s like one of those 1000-piece […]

At A Loss

When I was twelve or thirteen years old, my brothers and I stayed up late watching horror movies in the family room. I don’t remember what movies they were, nor does it matter; what matters is what happened afterwards. I slept on the floor in my parents’ bedroom most nights. For some reason, their room […]