I COULDN’T STOP overanalyzing everything and thinking about where I went wrong. When I worry, I really get down into a muddy pit of worry. My mind focuses on it in such an unfocused way. I think about this web and that web, stringing along chains of events, predicting possible outcomes, barely giving myself enough space to breathe. It was too much for an 18 year old to dwell on. I should be having fun, all footloose and fancy-free, but I just couldn’t stop replaying all my mistakes over in my head.

“Enough!” I cried to myself, alone in my dorm room, looking into the mirror hanging from the closet door. “You’re a crazy person, Jennie, and you need to get over it. You’re too sensitive, you take everything so seriously. You’re afraid of living. Ugh!” I threw my hands up in the air and walked away from the mirror, almost disgusted with myself.

Why couldn’t I just be me? Why did I have to feel afraid of everyone all the time? Maybe I was just afraid of hurting peoples’ feelings, a notorious people-pleaser. Instead of speaking up to voice my opinion, I always just backed down and cowered, tried not make waves, pretending to go with the flow when really I was swimming against the current. I had had enough of all that. It lost me Lisa, acting that way. She was understanding and kind and beautiful and yet my indecisive nature, my inability to act, was pushing her away. I was doing all this to myself.

“You’re good enough,” I said to myself, once more looking in the mirror.

“You’ve got it very good in life. You’re a good person. You’re smart. You work hard. People want to like you, if only you’d let them. You’re pretty,” I said, feeling a rush of emotion move through me, a tear coming to my eye. I tried to remain strong, pulling my hair tightly back into a ponytail and securing it with a piece of elastic. I looked into my own eyes, then down to my nose, my pale complexion, the light freckles on my skin, pallid and thin lips. I was pretty. I was me.

“You’ve got it good,” I reiterated. “No reason to be sad. No reason to hide. You’ve got to admit who you are, you’ve got to come clean. You’ve got to learn to love yourself, to accept yourself, and then everybody else will love and and accept you as well. Stop with all this self-destructive bull.”

It was all just a series of misunderstandings, a turn of events that didn’t have to happen. Maybe I was subconsciously sabotaging myself. Like I was so wound up in my anxieties that I wouldn’t let myself have a respite. I couldn’t let myself be happy. I knew that this just wouldn’t do. I couldn’t continue on like this. There were so many free people around me there at college, other girls who were lesbians like me and could admit it. Lisa, as an obvious example. Anna Sacco, the damned head of the ALOHA program, English professor, writer and poet, she was a lesbian. And she was an older woman, too. I’m sure she had a much harder time than I was having. Her era wasn’t as kind as the era we now lived in.

I knew that I had to start making myself be heard and I knew that I needed action. Lisa wasn’t going to forgive me if I just went to her, tail

between my legs, meekly begging. I needed to find my courage and start living my life for me.

And maybe see a therapist. Because all these positive thoughts of valor and action were continuously being picked at by that other part of my brain that couldn’t shut up about how I wasn’t good enough. These two voices were at odds and I knew that I couldn’t sort it all out alone.