March twentieth, twenty-twenty- six : the vernal equinox arrived at 10:46 a.m. Eastern. For one perfect moment, day and night were in perfect balance. The universe seemed to hit pause, exhale deeply, and whisper, “Okay… new chapter.”
Astronomers see it as simple celestial mechanics: Earth’s tilt finally neutral, the Sun crossing directly over the equator. But astrologers know it as the real New Year. The Sun slips into Aries—the bold, head-butting ram—and the message is loud and clear: “Let’s fucking go.”
No formal resolutions. No champagne (unfortunately). Just raw, fiery momentum.
Winter has finally stopped sulking. Everything is waking up. Bulbs are cracking through the soil, birds are screaming at dawn, and your skin is already aching for the sun. It is not random. The planet is rebooting. The energy is higher, sharper, alive.
This is the time to release the old baggage—the heavy thoughts, the stale patterns that have been holding you back. Aries energy does not do polite. It is fire. It is passion. It says: “do it now.” (Almost as if it was a Nike slogan).
But here is the secret: balance comes first. Equal light, equal dark. Plant your intentions slowly, deliberately. Manifest, yes—but then get to work. The universe does not hand out rewards for wishes alone. It responds to movement. It rewards those who prove they are worthy of what they are asking for.
Me? Tonight I will be sleeping with my crystal under my pillow—not to beg for wishes, but to show gratitude. I have learned the hard way that desperate praying and bargaining usually pushes what you want even further away. The universe rarely delivers on a silver platter exactly as you pictured it. Instead, it shows up in its own clever, roundabout way.
Last year’s mess was just fertilizer. Spring is not only about flowers (though I do love me some flowers). It is living proof that nothing stays buried forever. The cosmos do not do accidents—the universe does cycles. And right now, we are standing at the starting line.
So grab your coffee, step outside, and feel the shift. This year feels brand new—not because the calendar flipped, but because the stars say so.
We are also in the Year of the Fire Horse. In the Chinese zodiac, the same animal sign returns every twelve years. For example, my mom and my boyfriend are both born in the year of the Dog. However, they are not the same age. They are just twelve years apart. And 1990? That was the Year of the Metal Horse. Which makes this my year. I am a fiery horse!
Everything happens for a reason. There is no such thing as purely negative—only upside waiting to be uncovered. Maybe the year itself does not even matter that much. What is meant for you will find you one way or another. I choose to believe that the universe is on my side, though.
Sophomore year of college, I finally felt like I was finding my groove.
I had made a new friend I planned to live with the following year, and I was starting to get ahead academically after a rocky freshman year. That year, I roomed with a Russian girl from the university’s swim team. We clicked almost immediately and became genuinely close friends.
I was slowly gaining confidence in my new, more voluptuous body, even if I still struggled with it. We had a surprising amount in common, and she helped me adjust to living on my own while everything back home continued to unravel. We met in a Russian language class. I signed up thinking it would be an easy A. Even though, I was basically fluent in Spanish in high school. But, I was burned out and did not want anything too demanding. Because she was still very new to the U.S., I got to play guide, showing her the ropes of American college life.
She only lived with me for one semester. When the swim team at Syracuse was cut, she moved out. But I kept thriving (*exaggerating*) and it was all thanks to that Russian class. Through it, I met another girl — an American — who quickly became one of my closest friends. She lived off-campus in a chaotic house full of eccentric roommates. The place was straight out of *Fight Club*. It was filthy. Everything seemed to be broken. I vividly remember waking up on the couch one morning to see a rat-size cockroach scurrying across the coffee table.
Every weekend, I would take the bus and then hike up the snowy hills just to get there. I loved it. I loved the weird mix of characters who lived in that house. Looking back, I know they were mostly low-class, pot-smoking losers, but at the time, I finally felt needed. And God, I needed that feeling more than anything.
One weekend, they threw a Valentine’s Day house party. That’s where I met him.
He was very attractive, and he gave me real attention. We ended up spending the entire night together. No, we did not sleep together, but… we did everything else.
At that point in my life, I was still deeply disgusted with myself. My new friends were helping rebuild my self-esteem, but I still could not stand looking at myself in the mirror. Every time I saw the size on my clothes tags, a wave of shame came over me.
I always struggled to understand how overweight people can genuinely seem happy and confident. I see it all the time. There are plus-size celebrities and popular friends of skinny people. These individuals are living their lives without apparent shame.
Even now, I sometimes feel bloated or insecure about my body. I tell my boyfriend he can cheat on me. He always reassures me that he would never and says I am just being a silly little girl.
— —
Now, back to the guy I met over Valentine’s weekend in 2009.
Through my new chaotic houseful of misfits, I quickly learned the truth. The guy I had holed up with was in a very serious relationship. His girlfriend was just out of town that weekend.
But he kept texting me. Kept reaching out.
So I made a decision. If I could not be the one someone chose, I would settle for being the other woman. My experience with love was limited. Up to that point, it had already convinced me I was unlovable. I felt unworthy of anything real. Being the secret side piece felt like the best I could hope for. I felt like a modern, broken version of Marilyn Monroe. I was the girl you have fun with, but never marry.
I leaned hard into the role. I started dressing more provocatively—low-cut shirts, fishnet tights stretched over my thick thighs. We made plans to keep sneaking around behind her back. I even stalked his girlfriend on social media, studying her life, picking apart what I thought I was missing.
Sexualized Me (3rd from the right )
It did not take long to realize he was just another loser misfit with a habit of cheating. But the thrill was still there. The secrecy. The danger. I went home and bragged to everyone that I was “the other woman” (okay, I may have white-lied about actually sleeping with him). I even made plans to finally give in to him during junior year.
Fate, however, had other plans.
I never made it back to Syracuse University. I never got that apartment with my new friend. And thankfully—thankfully—I never became the other woman.
I remember the first day of college. I thought I would rebel. I imagined I would transform and emerge into a much stronger, skinnier, and beautiful person. This was post high school downfall.
I moved into a dorm. It smelled like old pizza and someone else’s regret. My roommate was an atheist/ anarchist.
People talk about college like it is this crucible—late-night debates, soul-searching walks across campus, professors who become mentors. These people did not know how emotional I was/ how much I would overreact.
Thus, it was mostly lukewarm coffee, group projects where one guy did everything, and a syllabus I skimmed once. I did not even get the degree. I got the debt though. But formative? Nah.
The big moments—the ones you are supposed to remember—felt scripted. The boys? The parties? If I wanted to drown my sorrows, they were easy enough to find. Dumb drunk boys are always willing to canoodle with a sad fatty. And it was college… Cheap beer is always available. Whether you are lonely or a in a group of friends, Natty Light is there.
Philosophy 101? I nodded along while thinking about lunch— I was always thinking about lunch. There even was a bit of heartbreak as I briefly got involved with a guy who had a girlfriend. I did learn how to fake confidence. I also learned how to survive. Another skill I picked up was how to dodge eye contact in the dining hall. As I basically lived there… Useful? Sure. Life-altering? Not really. I was just a broken person—slightly more caffeinated, slightly more cynical, but still emotional and down-bad me. College was not a plot twist. It was background noise. The real stuff happened after. Outside the quad. No cap and gown required.
The myth says it has to be epic. Reality says: it is just school.
I want to elaborate on this post. Pretty Woman was one of the first movies that I watched in America. I was four years old. I did not speak any English. But I understood it completely.
To me, it is not a story about a sex worker. This contrasts with the Oscar movie Anora, which I was told was a modern version of Pretty Woman. It is a story of a woman who needs saving. So I spent my entire life aspiring to be a damsel in distress.
At four years old, I was not sure what I would need to be saved from. I knew that Vivienne also saved Edward. So, I aspired that I would need to be a savior to my own man.
Ultimately, this is how I have arranged my own life. I am strong enough for him but I need him to save me from..myself? And everything that have been through. Women are not supposed to be “I do not need a man” strong—and while I do not blame anyone or anything that has happened to me— I simply should have reacted differently.
Therefore, I need some saving. I need my man to save me from overreacting and overthinking everything that happens.
I guess that is what I admire about this character and this story. Vivienne did not simply demand a check or cash to cure her status in life. She needed a man who actually cared enough about her and gave her guidance to achieve a better life. She also showed him that there is more to life than the money and status that he was chasing. She helped him overcome his fear of heights etc. overall, this movie is a beautiful fairytale for girls of all ages.
After viewing this fairytale throughout the years, I now know what is happening in the dialogue and the story. While Vivienne is definitely sharp and witty, she is a character who I am proud to have embodied as an influence
I used to think that my father was the strongest man. I never see him cry and I never see him ask for approval. But when I was at Syracuse University, my mother dismantled us. I have always been a “daddy’s girl—“ you hurt him, you hurt me. Instead we were made to feel like something was wrong with us. Like we were just broken.
I hated to see him waive the white flag. I thought love was to be safe but instead I went into a tailspin. You hurt my father, you hurt me. So I went even deeper into my downward spiral. I kept eating my feelings. One year later I would end up in a coma and I would be disabled.
The worst part is that my mother had rewritten the whole story to make her the hero. She made excuses so she could be seen as the victim. I remember calling a good friend of mine (she has too much Ukrainian pride now though) sitting on the ground outside of the county jail in tears. There is no hero in this story. This was the moment when I broke down even more
So I turned to the manosphere accounts on Twitter (RIP). The manosphere gave me solace. It taught me about the manipulation that caused my father to fold. It also evidently taught me to hate on women. I know this is not exactly the right way to live. However, you will never catch me screaming about girl power and glass ceilings. I love men. I think that they are the greatest people on the planet. I also felt like I was being broken and betrayed by a woman. And I took it out on her. I took it too far.
I was already spiraling (because), but now I went down even further.
I learned how strength and weakness are not just physical— but instead strength is spine. Being able to say “no” instead of the quiet surrender I witnessed. I know that I should forgive. Holding onto pain only hurts you. But you cannot forgive when they keep taking. It is not pain and it is not hate— I do not have the energy for that.
We were dismantled. I was dismantled. It lead me towards rock bottom— but now I only have energy for progress and achieving my goals and desires.
A friend of mine recently reminded me about the five year stint I took from eating meat. It was from twenty-twelve until twenty-seventeen. I was vegan during this period. Eating meat again reopened my eyes. This reminds me of the many “fad” diets that I have tried.
After initially getting sick, I had testing to find out which foods I had an intolerance to.
At first, we saw a woo woo type doctor. He had me place my hands on a stone. I could do only my right one obviously. He told me that the stone showed I need to stay away from anything that comes from beef. My mother bought into everything that that “doctor” was shilling. However, my father and I had a hard time believing that prognosis. So I had my blood tested by an actual naturopath.
My blood tests showed that I had an intolerance to dairy and chicken eggs. I was extremely overweight at the time. So, I figured that I might as well cut out all meat and fish, as well. I did not quit because meat was too heavy, or bad for the planet, or—worst of all— too expensive.
(Now I have a conspiracy theory that the doctors doctored those tests because I was so big and so sick).
Being vegan did nothing for me. It definitely was not difficult for me to give up meat; but I absolutely love sushi, ice cream and cheese. But I knew that I could no longer overindulge in these anymore (that is the issue here— overindulgence)
I mostly had a diet of carbohydrates during those years. This was obviously before I started my gluten free lifestyle. I could eat anything fried, doughy, and all of the pasta. And I still adhered to the diet. I also ate a diet full of beans and legumes. This ultimately made my body reject absorbing bean protein. Sigh. I do miss my hummus!—This recipe is not conducive to weight loss.
Now I simply eat whatever I desire. Because the second that that steak hit my tongue in twenty- seventeen everything clicked back into place. As if my body had been quietly waiting, storing up all this dumb, primal hunger. No guilt. No lecture. Just… meat. Warm, real, alive on the plate.
Now, compared to when I decided to go vegan, I can demonstrate discipline. This change has been in effect as of twenty-seventeen. I control how much I eat. This was the major difference. How much I am consuming. As I have mentioned, I managed to lose more than one hundred pounds.
The body is created in the kitchen, not the gym. When I initially gained more than one hundred pounds— I killed myself in the gym and my parents had me see a personal trainer, but I kept eating more of anything and everything. That is why my weight barely budged. I was extremely unhappy and this—reflected in the mirror—and ultimately reflected in my health.
I have learned that weight loss and body image are based on my mental state. I finally found my voice and accepted my opinions instead of following the crowd. As a result, I got happier and met the man of my dreams. I also saw my body transform to mirror my state of mind.
I guess what I am saying is—sometimes you quit because you are scared. Or lazy. Or—in my case—it seemed the easiest way to lose the weight I gained. At least, I thought it was. And then one day you bite into something again, and remember: “This is why I liked it.” Not because it is fancy— although I do love that aspect. Not because it is trendy. Just because it is good. And good makes me happy. Happy equals healthy.
I used to think confidence was something you either had—like eye color—or you did not have. Turns out, it’s more like muscle: you build it, you lose it, you flex it, then you flex again.
The shift started small. I stopped apologizing for existing. No more sorry. No more shrinking when someone walked in. Main character energy. I just… stayed. Took up space. Let my voice land without flinching. That was the main challenge that showed me that I was on the right path. My voice. I started using it.
First trick? Fake it till you make it—except I did not have fake it. I borrowed it. Watched people who walked like they owned the sidewalk, copied their posture, their pauses. Turns out, shoulders back is not magic—it’s physics. Shrinking away physically makes you shrink away psychologically. And once you feel taller, your brain starts believing it.
Second: I quit collecting opinions. Not every critique needs a reply. Not every stare needs an explanation. I decided my worth was not up for vote. My worth has been at the center of my life and how it has been.
That alone cut half my anxiety. The real glow-up? Saying “no”. Not mean “no”, just clear “no”. Nah, I’m good. Not tonight. That is simply not for me. Especially when it comes to someone I regard as a superior. I have to stand up for myself. And I still get nervous. Still second-guess. Now, I talk to that voice in my head like it is a friend. “Hey, we have done this before. Chill.” (Life hack: this is how I know that I will recover!)
The fear and the lack of confidence does not vanish. I still ask others to confirm that I am doing a good job. I do not just peacock around. But my lack just gets quieter. Confidence is not about never doubting yourself. It is about doubting yourself, shrugging, and moving anyway. Because the most confident person in my life? She is not fearless. She is just done pretending she needs permission. And honestly? That feels better than any spotlight ever could.
The first thirty minutes upon waking, program your brain for the rest of your day. I read that somewhere so it must be true. I always start my day with HIM. My boyfriend. Any dutiful woman should.
And because it is important that you find positivity in your life, I find it in him. My boyfriend makes the dark days brighter—even when he does not know it. There is this thing he does without trying: he turns my worst moods into something bearable. I mean— I am actually generally a positive person. I am a disabled thirty-six year old girl who still lives with her parents. I am thousands of miles away from the man I love. Given my status in this life, it would be understandable if I was genuinely down.
I receive plenty of criticism. People who love me, like my parents, criticize me. Also, the world at large thinks I am not living my life correctly. Everyone seems to have an opinion on how I should live my life. All I can really do is drown out all of this negativity around me. I choose to live for myself and my beautiful future ahead.
Right now we have to do it virtually through technology (is it really our fault that we met thousands of miles apart?) Because of the time difference (*eye roll*), he wakes me up at three every morning before he starts his day. We whisper sweet nothings to each other. He sends me videos of him making his espresso (real men drink espresso). He knows that makes me insanely happy and proud. Then I drift off to sleep until he gets to work. It’s about an hour—maybe two if I sleep in. Because that is what a committed person does— supports the person they love.
I do not require grand gestures or therapy-speak from him —just his being there for me. And honestly? It is weird how much that matters. I often feel alone— criticized, ignored— like no one cares about what I think or say. He does not argue. He does not fix. But goddammit— he listens.
At times, I do not even want to smile. But, because of him, I usually do. And suddenly the room feels less heavy. It is not that he erases the bad stuff. Life still happens—that gnawing anxiety I cannot shake. But he is like… a filter. Everything gets softer around him.
How he tells me to scream and cry because he gets it. I need that release. I am so tired of keeping everything in. How he entertains my passions. I go on rants about a topic that I love, and he just lets me talk. And how excited he gets for me when I achieve a personal success.
I know that sounds stupid. But to me it is pretty perfect. People talk about love like it is fireworks. They criticize us for not obeying their rules. But our love feels more like a lamp in a storm—quiet, steady, just enough light to see the next step. He does not solve my problems (not yet at least!). He just reminds me they are not the whole story.
Sometimes, I worry I lean too hard on him, like I am borrowing his calm because mine ran out. He does not realize he is the reason I breathe easier. That I smile every time I wake up (even if it is at three in the morning). So here is the truth: he doesn’t fix my negative life. He just makes it feel smaller. And for now, that is enough.
If we are going to go through the character arc of my not being good enough and the affect that it had on my life thus far , we have to further elaborate on what led me into my post-high-school downward spiral and my current health issues.
In high school, I tried extremely hard. After my middle school experience at being an overweight/ flunking embarrassment, I was shown how people only gave me praise and attention if I wore a size zero and excelled in my studies. So I withered away and took notes/ highlighted my books until my fingers bled. I tried to keep a social life, but eventually the obsession with my food and appearance gave way.
I even drove myself to school (once I got my license) hours earlier so that I could sit in the computer lab and search for homes where an adolescent can live on her own (I always thought that living on my own was the answer to my prayers!)
And then of course there was a boy. He was a firefighter, did not go to my school and actually showed interest in me. I was not used to this. I was deprived of romance and even though I had no interest in him, I craved his touch, his kisses and his text messages as if I had been trekking through the desert for years and he was a fresh spring of water.
But I never slept with him. I must have had some kind of moral code, because this would continue in university. We would do everything but as soon as it came to the actual act, I became dismissive. That did not please the twenty-year-old-playboy -firefighter, and suddenly his attention turned elsewhere. He went back to his ex-girlfriend— an easy get— fake tanned, a bit chubby and dumb as rocks.
My ego was absolutely shattered. My heart cracked open—like someone took a hammer to a glass jar and just let it shatter. Even though I had spent years not eating or enjoying life in order to be at the top of my class and in order to look like I was perfect—even though I made myself better than anyone else—I was once again still not good enough. My carefully curated Kate Moss-esque figure and resume quickly became crumpled trash in the midst of a “normie” high school girl. So I officially gave up.
I literally just stopped caring. I threw my hands up and started eating everything that I was missing out on for years. I stopped studying too. I took my tests after spending the night binging a television series (and binging copious amounts of snacks!). I would skip my classes the day that a major paper was due so that I could get it done the second before it was due.
I gained more than twice the amount of weight that I weighed in high school. My parents were shocked when they saw me, they had me workout with a personal trainer, as if that was the issue—I simply had to move more not eat less. However , the judgements only made me eat more. Still not good enough.
I reached out to some of the family friends I had grown up with so that I could have some semblance of a social life. And they helped. Invited me out. Made me laugh. But now everything felt fake.
I was avoiding everyone from high school who knew me as the “anorexic girl “— the one who would only wear high heels and dresses or skirts instead of the jeans and sneakers of everyone around me— because I used to be better than everyone around me (or at least I believed I was).
Now I was ashamed. Now high heels would pinch my chunky toes and instead of flaunting my slender legs in skirts, I hid my giant slabs of meat in sweatpants and size thirty-two jeans. I avoided posting pictures of myself. I used to be so beautiful. I used to take immense pleasure in hearing my father tell his friends, “isn’t my daughter so hot?” He stopped saying that…
Essentially the high school “breakup” did not just end a relationship—it ended me. Once we had met, once I had tasted the attention I had been yearning for; I had built my whole senior year around him: I had started eating again (but not too much and of course I would never let myself go to sleep without working off every calorie I had eaten that day), late-night texts so that he could get more attention than my studies did, and fantasies about life together.
College was supposed to be freedom. Instead it felt like punishment. Instead of being lithe and studious, I was just studying myself—how to numb out, how to fake smiles, how to avoid anyone who might matter. I “slutted” around, but obviously nothing stuck. Every kiss tasted like betrayal. Every “I like you” sounded like a lie, because why would anyone like an over-two-hundred-pound girl? I drank too much and I slept too much (making up for sleeping only a few hours every night in high school).
The worst part? I blamed him. For years. Like if he had never cheated, I would have gone to Yale, had a perfect GPA and had a perfect boyfriend. But It took recovering from my upcoming disability for me to realize: heartbreak does not ruin college. It does not ruin life. You do. You ruin it when you stop showing up. When you decide you are too broken to try. When you treat every new person like a ticking bomb.
Do not let one bad love story become the whole plot. Because the truth is, the boy who broke me? He is probably still in his mom’s basement, playing Fortnite. And I am here—yes, I do not like my current situation but I am surviving—writing this, breathing, alive and planning for a future. That is the real win.
Essentially this entire experience taught me that everything happens for a reason— as corny as it may sound. Because honestly? The real damage was not the “breakup”—it was how I let it define me. I let one boy’s cowardice rewrite my future. I let shame decide my friends and my life.
It is not something that I should look back on and regret, because what is really the point of that?! If I was never made to feel like I was not good enough and thus never imploded, I would not have gone through the whole process of finding my voice and who I am, that means that I would not have started with the Twitter account full of snarky comments and controversial statements (seriously— people would constantly accuse me of either being a federal agent or a man pretending to run a girl’s account) and that would not have led me to meet the someone three thousand miles away— the man of my dreams. Maybe he is that perfect boyfriend I had envisioned finding in college.
I am still buzzing from last week —just lying there, tangled up in sheets, his arm slung over me.
I swear, nothing feels better than finally being in the same room as him. No more FaceTime lag, no more “can you hear me?”—just his stupid grin, his real voice, the way he smells like his high end cologne collection. I melt every time he opens his arms towards me . Like, actually melt. My shoulders drop, my jaw unclenches, and suddenly the whole past —my parents criticisms, constantly feeling ignored and not understood —evaporates.
He does not even have to say anything. Just stands there, arms open . We did not do grand gestures. No roses, no playlists. Only sweet treats waiting for me upon arrival. Then him flopping onto the hotel bed, me curling into his side like it is the only spot that fits. His hand finds mine—always does—like it’s muscle memory. And I think, “God, this is it”. This is what I have been waiting for.
The best part? He gets quiet too. Like he knows I need five minutes of nothing—just us breathing, the TV on mute, his thumb rubbing slow circles on my knee. I could stay like that forever. I do not care if it sounds sappy. I am happy. Not content or fine—happy. The kind that makes my chest ache a little, like it is too big for my ribs. And yeah, I miss him. But right now? I guess I just wait.
The waiting is terrible but necessary and I hope —temporary. When the bleed took my body away from me, I was waiting to go back to university (I thought I would physically be back on campus), but instead, my parents made me apply online and finally finish my Bachelor’s degree TEN YEARS LATER. Then came the waiting for my recovery—I realized that I wasn’t made for the indoctrination and fake “wokeness” of the “real world.”
But when I met my man I thought that this waiting was over. He loves me as I am—so I no longer needed to rush anything or force myself into school/ work.
I found that in these settings, I was constantly being penalized for having the “wrong “ opinions in my essays and papers, but would immediately be rewarded and praised as soon as I brought up my disability. I did not want to use my situation as a crutch. I hate pity. So I chose to be myself. A little right wing, conservative and definitely against any kind of diversity. And everyone hated that. Except the love of my life.
But when I am back home alone again—in my own little bubble—the quiet hits different—like the rooms are too big without him breathing next to me. I miss the way he rolls over and pulls me closer—I keep replaying it: his fingers tracing lazy circles on my back, the way he mumbles to me even though I’m already half-asleep. It’s stupid how much I crave that—his weight, his heat, the dumb little sounds he makes when he is dreaming. And yeah, I know it is cheesy to say out loud, but… I am happy.
Like, stupid-happy. Not the Instagram-filter kind—just the real, messy, I-cannot-believe-this is-mine kind. I never had this before. Was I ever truly happy? I manipulated my way into graduating with straight As and everything else I had done was always done through force or for someone else. This is mine. My life. My happiness. So here’s to him. To us. To every second I get to be physically right there, skin on skin, no screens, no distance—just him and me and this ridiculous, perfect quiet… I guess I have to go back to waiting for this feeling again.
Kat’s Musings 