Gemma Hartley

Again and again I refuse to prioritize, refuse to let anything slide, at the expense of my physical and mental health.

I was lucky enough to avoid a great deal of body negativity growing up.

When I was a teenager, I felt very certain that I was not a feminist. I didn’t exactly understand the textbook definition of feminism, but I had a pretty good sense from the negative connotation I had gleaned while growing up in a narrowly Christian setting.

I spent the better part of two years a frazzled mess over things that ultimately didn’t matter. My child was still growing up perfectly normal, even when he didn’t follow the straight and narrow path set forth by his pediatrician. I was driving myself over the edge for nothing.

I am sometimes painfully envious of other (usually childless) writers who are doing the very thing I swore I would have done by now — publishing a novel.

Clearly, it does not take long for my over-ambition to turn me from a vision of perfection into a train wreck you can't look away from. Behold, my first week of school splendor, versus my second week of school ineptitude.

Back when I had my first child, back when he was still a baby, I imagined us moving to the mountains. I was thinking about having three more kids, living off the grid, and soaking up every last bit of their wild childhood. It was a fantasy, through and through.

I felt unique in my passion for martial arts, my affinity for Call of Duty, my go-with-the-flow attitude toward boyish adventures. I wanted to be “one of the guys,” while still retaining the distinction of my sexuality. I longed to be the quintessential cool girl — desirable yet approachable. But in retrospect, all that really amounted to internalized misogyny.

This straggler struggle is weighing on me! That is, the struggle of having one straggler child left at home, and I’m wondering if it will ever get better.

Raise a glass to Friendsgiving - feasting without any sides of controversy or conspiracy theorizing. Friendsgiving is the best of all feasts.