As I hustled down to the lake in my favorite floor-length dress, backpack strapped to my back, I willed myself not to throw up. I’d scoped out the location the Friday before: a dock at Green Lake at sunset. It had been acceptably emptied of people then, but I knew…

Growing up in a small, conservative town, I didn’t have the words to make sense of myself or my history or my world, but I have them now — When I first learned how to read and write, I used to copy stories from my Little Golden Books, word for word, into my notebook. I loved stories, but I didn’t know how to write one myself without looking to somebody else’s. Life is like that, I think. I was…

This Love is a Broken Record Once upon a time, I fell into the trappings of an on-again, off-again relationship. The longest Chris and I went without breaking up was 10 months. After that, we were lucky if we made it more than 2 months before one of us called…

When our relationship was just six months old, my significant other and I packed up his parents’ Euro van for a road trip to Glacier National Park. It was the Friday evening of Labor Day weekend, and I wanted to arrive early Saturday morning. According to Google Maps, our destination…

My significant other Rylan and I are at the age where our friends are getting married, and I’ve noticed a common trend at the ceremonies. The vows don’t seem to be vows in the traditional sense anymore; instead, they’re more an exchange of relationship-defining stories, as if each person is…