Melissa Petro

My relationship with my father was never father-daughter picnics. Maybe when I was very little — or maybe this is less a memory and more of a wish — I have an image of myself as a very little girl sitting on my father’s lap, and we are both laughing. Perhaps my father enjoyed fatherhood when his children were very little, but that joy seemed to curdle into constant frustration as my brother and I grew up.

"We built a luxury dream home but can only afford to have two children."

It's pretty well understood in 12 step programs that "who you see here and what you say here, stays here."

[I]t looks like our wedding will cost us more like $10,000. That is a hell of a lot of money. Still, it’s our one and only wedding. And for a wedding in Manhattan that includes most of the typical expenditures [...] that’s not too bad. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to make your big day (relatively) less expensive.

Drunk or not, it’s a fact that white people are more prone to acting like assholes to authority figures—because we’re more likely to get away with it.

The biggest fashion mistake of my lifetime may not be what I wore, but what I didn’t.

For someone like me — someone with difficulty forming and maintaining relationships, who has struggled with commitment, and who’s got intimacy issues galore — surely, you can see the appeal. You don’t need to be Freud to figure out why, at a disturbingly young age, I looked forward to the day a man would commit.

When I first got sober, I started to accept that the “happy” occasions in life — holidays, birthdays and other special events — might not only feel happy. When I’m “supposed” to feel good, I feel nervous, anxious, and embarrassed. The center of attention, I feel vulnerable and on display.

Stock photos seemed to get pregnancy and parenting all wrong. When a Facebook friend posted looking for a real life pregnant stock photo model, I offered.

Sure, "friends forever" sounds nice. In theory. But sometimes it's better that two people just not be friends.