Author: Maureen Joseph

Journal Entries

The Unspoken Invoice

Dry begging is a form of emotional manipulation.

It allows a person to make someone else feel responsible for solving a problem without ever having to ask for help directly. The request is hidden inside a complaint, a sad observation, or the carefully timed mention of a financial hardship. If someone offers, the dry beggar gets what they wanted. If no one offers, they can become resentful. If confronted, they can always say, “I never asked you for anything.”

Many years ago, my friend Ellie invited me to her housewarming party. She and her husband, Robert, had spent eight years working overtime, skipping vacations, paying down debt, and saving for a home. I had ordered their housewarming gift months earlier, as soon as I learned they had closed.

The house was beautiful. The living room had leather couches, warm tones, and hunter-green walls. The kitchen incorporated salvaged wood from an old church, and the library was the kind of room that made you consider abandoning the party altogether. Robert, a master carpenter, had completed much of the woodwork himself. Ellie had thrifted most of the furniture.

Nothing about that house had fallen into their laps. Every room reflected years of planning, sacrifice, patience, and labor.

While helping myself to some potato salad, I ran into Ellie’s friend and colleague, Ruby. I had met her a few times before. We exchanged pleasantries and sat together. I liked Ruby. She was intelligent.

“The carpentry is beautiful,” I said. “Especially the woodwork near the staircase.”

“Yeah, they got a good deal on the house,” Ruby replied. “It was a foreclosure.”

“They were able to put more money into making it their own,” I said. “Robert did most of the work himself.”

“Must be nice,” she said. “I’m still paying off my student loans.”

I reminded her that Ellie had paid hers off before she and Robert even began looking for a house.

“Still,” Ruby said, glancing around the room. “Her husband is a carpenter. I’m sure he knew people who did things for next to nothing.”

“Are you suggesting that Robert underpaid people?”

She immediately softened it.

“Of course not. I’m just wondering how they afforded all this.”

They had afforded it through eight years of work and sacrifice, which Ruby knew. She simply did not want the answer to be that ordinary. Hard work would mean Ellie had earned the life Ruby was standing inside. A secret advantage would make it easier to dismiss.

I avoided Ruby for most of the evening.

Later, after nearly everyone had left, I stayed behind to help Ellie clean the kitchen. Ruby walked in as we were putting away the remaining food.

“You guys really did a phenomenal job,” she told Ellie. “It must be so nice to be able to afford all of this.”

“It took a lot of sacrifice,” Ellie said.

Ruby picked up one of the trays and slid it into the refrigerator.

“Anyway, I have to take my car in tomorrow. I have no idea what’s wrong with it or how much it’s going to cost. I’ll probably have to wait until payday to eat.”

There it was.

She had not asked Ellie for money. She had not requested a loan, a meal, a ride, or even practical advice. She had simply announced, inside the home she had spent the evening calculating and questioning, that she might soon be unable to afford food.

Ellie immediately offered help.

“Do you want Robert to take a look at it? It may be something simple.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Ruby said.

The offer did not relieve Ellie. Her face fell after Ruby left the room. She stood at the sink drying the same plate much longer than any plate needed to be dried, staring somewhere beyond the kitchen wall.

Ruby had said she would be fine. She had also made sure Ellie would spend the night wondering whether her friend was going hungry.

I should mention that Ruby owned her own townhouse and, according to her, earned more than Ellie. Owning property and earning a decent salary do not necessarily mean someone has money readily available. People have debt, private expenses, and financial problems they do not advertise.

Well, most people do not advertise them.

At the time, I decided that perhaps I had judged Ruby too harshly. Maybe she had been having a bad day. Maybe her car was about to collapse into a pile of bolts in the mechanic’s parking lot. Maybe she was dealing with a financial situation she had told no one about.

Eventually, I stopped thinking about her and that evening altogether.

Around Christmas, a group of us made plans to have drinks at The Plaza Hotel. Ellie was coming with Ruby and two other friends. Beforehand, we had all agreed that each person would pay for their own drinks and contribute toward the tip.

When I arrived, Ellie introduced me to the two women I had not met before, and I hugged Ruby. For the next hour, we drank, laughed, and had a wonderful time. I decided that I had definitely misjudged her at the housewarming. Again, I liked Ruby.

Then the bill came.

Each of us placed a card on the table except Ruby. She picked up the check, studied it, and said, “Oh no, don’t worry about me. I’ll pay my part. I’ll just have to move some things around and hope nothing else comes up.”

No one had expressed concern.

No one had offered to pay.

No one had even asked her a question.

Still, she wanted to assure us that we did not need to worry about her.

I could not contain myself. Maybe it was the alcohol.

Nah. I am a loudmouth.

“Ruby, honey, why didn’t you say something when we made the plans?”

“What are you insinuating?” she asked, glaring at me.

Good.

“Nothing, really. You seem surprised, and I am surprised that you seem surprised.”

“Ruby, I’ve got it,” Ellie said.

There it was again.

“I don’t want you to get it,” Ruby replied. “I just find it a bit pricey. I have a right to express my opinion.”

One of the other women looked at her.

“That was not an opinion. You’re in academia. You should know the difference. If you’re having financial problems, you could have just said something. We are all grown adults here.”

“This is very authoritarian,” Ruby said. “God forbid a woman expresses her opinion.”

Ellie was becoming embarrassed. I could see the color rising in her face.

“Well, we have to leave,” I said. “Let’s pay the bill and stop keeping the waitstaff waiting. I have another engagement after this.”

Ruby finally took out her card, and I flagged down the waiter. We paid and left.

As time went on, I learned that these were not isolated incidents between Ruby and Ellie. This had become a common feature of their friendship. I had simply never been present at the right moment to recognize it.

Ruby would mention a bill, a repair, an unexpected expense, or some financial inconvenience. She would never directly ask Ellie for anything. She would just place the information in front of her, carefully wrapped in distress, and wait.

Ellie, being Ellie, would offer.

Sometimes it was money. Sometimes it was a meal. Sometimes it was Robert’s time and labor. Ruby rarely requested any of these things outright. She merely created a situation in which refusing to volunteer them felt unkind.

Over the years, Ellie quietly began pulling away from the friendship. There was no dramatic confrontation, no public falling-out, and no friendship tribunal convened in the faculty lounge. She simply stopped making herself as available.

She had finally begun to recognize the manipulation for what it was.

I no longer believed Ruby was jealous of Ellie. Jealousy would have been much simpler. Ruby had developed a method, and she used it well.

For a woman in academia, she was remarkably skilled at communicating through implication and then pretending not to understand how language worked.

She could analyze complicated texts, identify hidden meanings, explain context, and presumably recognize subtext when it appeared in literature. Yet whenever she announced that paying for one drink might destabilize her entire household, she became baffled that anyone detected an implied request.

Plausible deniability may have been her area of independent study.

That is what makes dry begging manipulative.

A direct request gives the other person something concrete to answer.

“Can you lend me fifty dollars until Friday?”

“Would you mind paying for my drink tonight?”

“I cannot afford this restaurant. Could we choose somewhere else?”

Those questions may be uncomfortable, but they are honest. They give the other person the dignity of knowing what is being requested and the freedom to say yes or no.

Dry begging avoids that honesty.

It is the deliberate placement of a need, hardship, or disappointment into someone else’s hands, followed by enough plausible deniability to insist that no request was ever made.

“I’ll pay. I just won’t be able to eat until payday.”

“I would love to go, but I could never afford something like that.”

“My car is making that noise again. I have no idea how I’m going to get to work.”

“I don’t need anything for Christmas. I’m used to going without.”

The dry beggar does not ask. They create an atmosphere.

The listener must then interpret the distress, identify the desired solution, make the offer, and absorb the guilt if they choose not to. The entire transaction takes place without the dry beggar ever risking the humiliation of hearing the word no.

If the offer comes, they receive the benefit.

If it does not, they can resent you for failing to understand.

If you confront them, they retreat behind the same defense Ruby used at The Plaza.

“I was only expressing my opinion.”

“I never asked you for anything.”

“You offered.”

Technically, all of those things may be true.

That is what makes the tactic effective. The manipulation is built around making the other person feel as though the decision was entirely their own.

The request remains unspoken because saying it aloud would reveal the transaction. A direct request could be declined. An emotional performance makes declining feel cruel.

The dry beggar does not send an invoice with a clear amount and a due date. They leave it sitting in your mind. You are expected to calculate the balance yourself.

Ellie eventually learned that every mention of Ruby’s financial distress did not require a response. Every uncomfortable silence did not need to be filled with an offer. Every emergency described in her presence did not automatically become hers to solve.

She stopped opening the envelopes.

Ruby never asked why.

Perhaps she already knew.

**Author’s Note**

In Journal Entries, I record reflections on money, work, value, choices, and the personal stories behind the numbers.

I’ve Been Watering the Wrong Plant

I didn’t wake up one morning hating anyone. Well, I hate everyone before coffee, but that’s not the point.

There wasn’t a screaming match. There wasn’t some dramatic betrayal. There wasn’t a single text message that ended a friendship.

After twenty grueling months of quietly carrying more than I admitted, it took a complete blackout over Fourth of July weekend for me to realize I had been watering the wrong plant.

Also, I threw out two pounds of breaded cutlets and about two hundred dollars’ worth of groceries. We even had an MTV Unplugged session by candlelight.

Nirvana who?

I messaged a couple of my friends either that evening or the next day because I didn’t have internet, and my cell reception in my apartment was practically nonexistent. My refrigerator had become an expensive biology experiment, my apartment was still dark, and life, in all its audacity, refused to pause.

Somewhere between trying to reconnect with the outside world and carrying the emotional weight of everything that had been quietly piling up long before the blackout, I realized I wasn’t just exhausted.

I was depleted.

I was met with a few text messages saying, “Sorry to hear that.” Not a single “Do you need anything?” or “Is there anything I can do?“

Not that I expected anyone to solve my problems.

I didn’t.

Some messages weren’t opened until four business days later. I eventually deleted them for my own sanity.

Call me childish.

Je m’en fous.

The deleted messages were noticed, and the conversations resumed as though nothing had happened. No acknowledgment. No “Hey… are you okay?“

I’ve never believed friendship means fixing everyone’s problems. Sometimes all you can offer is a text message that says, “How are you holding up?” More often than not, that’s enough.

Maybe I’m wired differently. I don’t think friendship is measured by how many birthdays you remember or how many years you’ve known someone. I think it’s measured in the follow-up. It’s the second text. The check-in. The, “Hey… how are you doing today?”

Those little gestures tell people they haven’t been forgotten.

Gestures matter. They always have.

Some losses don’t announce themselves with funerals. Sometimes they arrive disguised as ordinary Tuesdays, unread messages, or a blackout that quietly rearranges your perspective.

Sometimes It Isn’t About One or Two People

This isn’t an article about villains. Life isn’t that neat.

It’s about something many of us do without even realizing we’re doing it. We pour ourselves into friendships, projects, relationships, volunteer work, businesses, workplaces, committees, hell, even group chats that should have died in 2019. We convince ourselves we’re investing. Sometimes we are.

Other times, we’re watering somebody else’s houseplant while ours is sitting in the corner looking like it just survived the Black Death.

Before you know it, you’ve forgotten what you looked like before you became everyone else’s emotional Swiss Army knife.

It Was Never About the Effort

Here’s the irony: it was never the effort that exhausted me. Most of us don’t mind showing up for the people we love. We don’t mind listening, remembering, checking in, or giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Those things don’t usually break us.

What breaks us is never stopping to notice how much of ourselves we’ve quietly handed away.

You know how they drain a body before embalming?

It felt a little like that.

Except nothing had died.

At least, nothing I had noticed yet.

Looking back, I don’t think I was running out of energy.

I think I was slowly running out of myself.

The Question That Changed Everything

Somewhere during all of this, and I honestly couldn’t tell you the exact moment because these realizations never arrive on schedule, I caught myself wondering when I had become so comfortable putting myself at the bottom of my own list.

Nobody asked me to do that.

There wasn’t a board meeting where I was unanimously elected President of Keeping Everything Together. Looking back, it happened the same way most habits do: quietly enough that, after a while, you stop noticing they’re habits and start calling them your personality.

I simply got really good at watering.

Watering the Wrong Plant

Now, before the gardening community starts sharpening their pitchforks, I should mention that I don’t actually own a garden. I live in New York City. The closest I’ve ever come to landscaping is yelling at pigeons that pay entirely too little rent for my fire escape.

Humor me anyway.

Imagine spending every day tending to the same plant. You water it, rotate it toward the sunlight, trim the dead leaves, and quietly admire your handiwork. Then one afternoon your eyes wander a few feet to the left.

There’s another plant.

It’s been there the whole time.

The soil is dry. The leaves are curling in on themselves. You reach over to move it, and half the damn thing stays in your hand.

That’s the thing about neglect. It has terrible manners. It doesn’t bang on your front door demanding your attention. It doesn’t leave passive-aggressive Post-it notes on the refrigerator. It just waits. Patiently. Silently. Until one day you realize something has been dying in the same room you’ve been standing in all along.

Loving People Doesn’t Mean Losing Yourself

Here’s the part I wish somebody had told me years ago.

Being dependable is a wonderful quality.

Being endlessly available isn’t.

Somewhere along the line those two ideas started holding hands, and I never questioned whether they belonged together. They don’t.

I don’t think there’s anything noble about abandoning yourself in the name of loyalty. It’s just a slower, quieter form of neglect. The kind that doesn’t leave bruises or broken bones. It simply convinces you that whatever belongs to you can wait another day.
Until one day it can’t.

Final Thought

I’ve spent years watering other people’s plants. I don’t regret caring. I don’t regret believing in people, and I don’t regret showing up. I’d still choose to care because that’s who I am. What I won’t do anymore is assume there will always be enough of me left over at the end of the day.

Maybe that’s why this realization bothered me so much. It wasn’t because somebody disappointed me. People disappoint each other every day. It was because I had become so accustomed to checking the soil in everyone else’s garden that it never occurred to me to look over my own fence.

The scary part is that I don’t even remember when I stopped. It didn’t happen after some catastrophic event. It happened so gradually that neglect started feeling perfectly ordinary.

Funny how that works.

You can walk past the same dying plant every single day until one afternoon you finally notice it isn’t dying anymore.

It’s dead.

The Social Performance of “Natural”

I wear makeup quite a bit. Sometimes it’s full glam goth. Sometimes it’s subtle office makeup. The only time I’m usually barefaced is at the gym and even then, if I still have eyeliner on, it probably just means I came straight from work.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a very specific social interaction that seems to happen almost exclusively with other women. If I happen to be wearing makeup, there’s occasionally someone who will immediately announce, completely unprompted:

“I don’t wear makeup.”

The funny part is… before they even say it, I can usually tell.

Also, I don’t carry trophies or cookies in my bag.

What always fascinates me is that makeup was never the topic of conversation to begin with. We could be discussing the economy, jury duty, a parking ticket, or the collapse of civilization itself, and somehow we still arrive at:

“I only wear lip gloss.”

Wonderful. Ring the cathedral bells!

Sometimes the follow-up question is:

“What’s the special occasion?”

As though eyeliner automatically means I’m on my way to a gala, a séance, or the burial ceremony of a minor aristocrat. The interaction itself is what makes it strange. Nobody asked. The conversation was moving along perfectly fine before we suddenly took a detour into a press conference about concealer. What’s even more interesting is that these comments rarely happen in a vacuum. They usually appear in the presence of a woman who is visibly wearing makeup, which is why the interaction can sometimes feel less like casual conversation and more like subtle social positioning.

Because-ding ding ding– the statement is usually not about makeup at all.

It’s about identity.

For some people, “I don’t wear makeup” quietly translates into:
“I’m lower maintenance.”
“I’m more natural.”
“I’m not trying that hard.”
“I’m above all of this.”

None of those things is necessarily true, of course, but people often use appearance choices to communicate personality traits they want associated with themselves.

And sometimes, if we’re being honest, the comment functions as a kind of preemptive defense mechanism. If someone feels slightly insecure about how they present themselves, reframing it as a deliberate philosophy allows them to control the narrative before anyone else can interpret it for them.

That instinct, however, reveals something interesting.

People who are genuinely comfortable with their choices usually don’t feel the need to announce them to strangers.

Whether someone wears a full face of makeup, tinted moisturizer, or absolutely nothing at all, secure people usually just exist without making their appearance a personality trait. That’s what makes those random declarations feel so strange. Nobody was discussing makeup in the first place, yet somehow we’ve ended up holding a town hall meeting about concealer.

With men, the dynamic is usually different. Sometimes it’s clumsy curiosity.

Sometimes it’s the familiar:
“I prefer women without makeup.”An opinion often delivered from behind a meticulously sculpted beard and enough beard oil to lubricate industrial machinery.

Many men who claim to prefer “no makeup” are usually picturing a very specific kind of makeup they don’t recognize as makeup. What they often mean is: “I prefer makeup that looks effortless to me.” Which, ironically, usually requires effort.

Psychologically, comments like these often have very little to do with cosmetics themselves. In some instances, it’s subtle status signaling. Sometimes it’s an attempt to project authenticity. Occasionally, it’s mild negging disguised as honesty. And very often, it’s simply people attaching moral value to appearance choices that are ultimately neutral.

That’s the interesting shift we’ve watched happen culturally.

Women used to be judged for not wearing makeup because it supposedly meant they weren’t “put together.” Nowadays, women are sometimes judged for wearing makeup because it supposedly means they’re vain, insecure, artificial, or trying too hard.

The expectations changed, but the scrutiny never left.

Same courtroom. Different charges.

At the end of the day, makeup is not a moral issue.

Wear makeup. Don’t wear makeup. Smear yourself in bronzer like a rotisserie chicken. I genuinely do not care. But if nobody asked, maybe we can retire the strange little announcements.

We Need to Start Calling People Stupid Again

I find myself living in a strange moment in history where access to information has convinced many people that they possess expertise. A few searches here and there, a skim of a couple of articles—which I’m fairly certain most people don’t read properly anyway, because let’s be honest: people don’t read for comprehension anymore. They read for validation. Or maybe they watch a short video explanation that very few people actually make it to the end of. Suddenly, people with the attention span of a houseplant speak with the same confidence as those who have spent years studying a subject.

Searching, it turns out, is not the same thing as understanding.

God forbid you tell them that real expertise has always required something more demanding than curiosity and a search engine. Historians spend years learning how to read primary sources, understand historical context, and interpret conflicting accounts. Physicians train for years before diagnosing even the most common conditions. Scientists spend decades learning the methods that allow them to distinguish correlation from causation. Writers spend years learning how to research, structure arguments, and communicate ideas clearly. Yet the internet has loudly encouraged a cultural shift where familiarity with information is mistaken for mastery of it.

I experienced a small version of this temerity recently. After my father passed away early last year, my body began reacting in ways I had never experienced before. Insomnia returned like an old acquaintance who never learned how to leave. Night sweats felt like waterboarding sessions conducted by my own paralysis demon. Crying outbursts appeared out of nowhere—sometimes in the middle of a Macy’s cosmetic department.

To be fair, some lipstick swatches are criminal.

I should also mention that I’m not normally a crier.

The loss of simple pleasures, the inability to function like the well-oiled Victorian steam train I had previously convinced myself I was—it all started to add up. Grief, as it turns out, doesn’t just live in the mind. It often manifests physically.

After running a few tests, my doctor concluded that I was dealing with anhedonic depression. The tests came back normal. Human, even. Once treatment began, the physical symptoms gradually disappeared. I can’t deny that my body and face changed during that time, but I’m almost back on track now.

Anyhoo.

During this period, one friend became absolutely convinced she knew what was happening. Her first diagnosis was perimenopause. When that theory didn’t quite stick, the diagnosis quickly pivoted to PCOS. Yes—PCOS, the magical word women have been using the last couple of years to explain every symptom and inconvenience under the sun. The interesting part is that I was already under medical care and had discussed everything with my doctor.

Now, before someone’s polyester panties twist themselves into a catastrophic knot, let me say this clearly: there is nothing wrong with caring about someone’s health or asking questions. Concern is human. But there is a difference between expressing concern and insisting on a diagnosis after someone has already told you they are comfortable with the care they are receiving. Eventually, I had to tell her to back off because subtle hints, polite deflection, and my most reserved and couth responses were apparently not getting through.

This is what the internet has produced: the confident amateur. Someone who has gathered enough fragments of information to feel authoritative, but not enough depth to understand the limits of their knowledge.

And frankly, I think this is where we’ve gone wrong culturally. Somewhere along the way, we decided it was impolite to tell people when they are simply out of their depth. Instead, we nod politely while someone with fifteen minutes of Google research explains medicine, history, economics, or whatever topic they discovered that afternoon. We replaced honesty with endless politeness.

But sometimes the problem isn’t a difference of opinion. Sometimes the problem is that someone is being stupid. Not cruelly stupid. Not maliciously stupid. Just confidently, aggressively uninformed. And occasionally that deserves to be called what it is.

Because there is a difference between curiosity and competence. The internet has made the first easier than ever and the second somehow rarer. Access to information is one of the greatest achievements of the modern world. We carry the sum of human knowledge in our pockets. Unfortunately, we also carry the illusion that skimming that knowledge somehow makes us experts.

The internet is a remarkable tool. It can help you find information in seconds and expose you to ideas you might never have encountered otherwise. What it cannot do is replace years of study, training, experience, and intellectual humility. Historians still study sources. Doctors still study medicine. Scientists still study data. Writers still study language and ideas. Google studies your search history so it can sell you magnesium supplements and hormone-balancing tea.

Curiosity is admirable. Asking questions is healthy. Suggesting possibilities out of concern is human. But when someone tells you they are already under professional care and comfortable with that care, the respectful response is not to double down on your internet diagnosis. The respectful response is to step back.

And occasionally—when someone refuses to step back and insists on lecturing others about subjects they clearly do not understand—it may be time to revive a lost social skill: telling people they are being stupid.

Politely, if possible. Directly, if necessary.

Journal Entries

A darkly honest journal entry on the myth of “expensive” healthy eating and the slow death of basic cooking skills. A reflection on willpower, excuses, and the art of feeding yourself without theatrics.

A Journal Entry on the Death of Basic Cooking Skills

Date: Whenever Humanity Forgot How to Fry an Egg

I would like to know when not having basic cooking or meal-preparation skills became the norm. I’m not talking about osso buco or duck confit. I mean the bare minimum of human survival: making a sandwich, frying an egg, boiling potatoes. How about chopping an onion without summoning a crisis hotline? When did this become advanced alchemy?

I’m truly perplexed by people shrieking that eating healthy is expensive. I’m sorry — I wasn’t aware that lettuce was spun from gold by Rumplestiltskin or that chicken was mined from forbidden farms on another astral plane. You mean to tell me a sack of beans costs more than your ritual latte from the corner coffee shop? Come on now! Everyone is complaining about the cost of their warm beverages. The true cost isn’t money; it’s willpower. And that, apparently, is rarer than truffles.

Let me reiterate: give someone a head of cabbage and they stare at it as though it were a tax form written in ancient Aramaic. You know exactly what to do with a DoorDash promo code, but a bag of rice? Suddenly all of youse go blind.

And oh, the excuses. I can hear their decadent little cries through the screen: “Pots are expensive. Knives are expensive. Oil is expensive.” As if cookware were relics guarded by priests in cathedrals. These are the same souls who tithe to streaming services, pour offerings into vape smoke, and toast at bottomless brunches. But a skillet? Too extravagant for their altar.

No, healthy food isn’t expensive. Effort is. Effort is a currency few are willing to spend. Cooking requires patience, sharp steel, and the courage to touch raw vegetables as if handling the organs of mortality itself. And so the excuses pile up, while the grave collects faster than any creditor.

We live in an age where adults can assemble complicated IKEA furniture, diagnose strangers on TikTok, perform relationship autopsies in comment sections, and orchestrate seventy-step skincare routines… yet ask them to sauté an onion, and they behave like you’ve requested a blood ritual.

Most people have never been taught what to do with real food. Trust me, I didn’t grow up in a household of gourmet sorcery — my mother wasn’t exactly summoning Michelin stars, and I’m mostly self-taught. But even then, there were fragments of basic kitchen instinct floating around. Now? That instinct has gone extinct. The simplest ingredients — rice, beans, vegetables — might as well be relics from a forgotten civilization, because people stare at them like they require archaeological tools to decipher.

Prepared food feels easier, so they declare raw ingredients “too expensive,” masking the truth with consumer-friendly excuses. It’s easier to blame the price of tomatoes than admit, “I don’t know how to cook without step-by-step instructions and a microwave whispering encouragement.”

Cooking requires skill, yes, but more importantly — humility. The humility to fail. To burn something. To salt it wrong. To try again. People don’t want to acquire a new skill; they want convenience mimicking expertise. They want nutrition delivered, not earned.

Healthy food isn’t costly — ignorance is. Produce prices haven’t skyrocketed beyond reach; the willingness to learn has plummeted. A pound of lentils is a few dollars. The real cost is curiosity, patience, practice — the unsexy virtues no one can Postmates.

Healthy eating collapses not under inflation but under inexperience. The vegetable aisle becomes a crypt, not because the food is unaffordable, but because no one knows how to resurrect it into a meal. It’s a lack of know-how, not funds — a deficit of skill, not currency. And so the myth persists, repeated like a poorly reconciled account: “healthy food is expensive.” Nevertheless, the ledger reveals what the excuses try to hide.

This journal entry is a personal reflection and not intended as nutritional, medical, or financial advice. Food prices, accessibility, and dietary needs can vary by location and circumstance. Please consult a qualified nutritionist, healthcare provider, or local resource for guidance specific to your situation. This is not the place for projecting blame or defensiveness—if you feel the urge, please consult a healthcare professional or take a long, honest look in the mirror.

 **Additional Notes** 

For basic cooking skill resources, visit here. 

You can read my previous journal entry here.

The Violence of Silence: An Autopsy of a Vanishing Friend

Coffee is more than caffeine. It’s a ritual, a gesture, and a litmus test for generosity in an age of ghosting, swipes, and emotional bankruptcy.

On today’s episode of “How can I use mental health to justify my terrible behavior?”

Oh — did that offend you?
Good. Sit down. Let the candlelight flicker while you clutch your amethyst and mutter affirmations about your “boundaries.”

The New Spiritual Practice of Disappearing

When did it become normal to vanish into the night the moment life becomes inconvenient?
When did disappearing become a spiritual practice?
When did silence become the new love language?

We now live in an era where ghosting is marketed as self-care and avoidance is advertised as emotional intelligence. You send a message to someone you consider a friend and it takes them three to seven business days just to open it.

Apparently that’s “healing.”
Apparently you expecting basic communication is “toxic.”

Meanwhile they’re posting online every hour like Victorian ghosts rattling chains for attention.

You start wondering:
What did I do? Why am I being punished? Why am I being exiled to the outer darkness like a biblical pariah?

Let me answer that for you:
Absolutely nothing.
No wait — I’m wrong.

You did do something.

You were too understanding the first time.
Too forgiving the second time.
Too patient the fifteenth time.

You kept giving grace to someone who didn’t deserve that much of your spirit. You wanted to be the compassionate friend because you knew they “shut down” during episodes of depression, anxiety, spiritual crises, lunar cycles, Mercury retrogrades, and whatever else they blamed it on.

But eventually it becomes a pattern.
And God forbid you say anything. Suddenly they have “boundaries.”

My dear children of the night, it’s not boundaries.
It’s guilt-dodging wrapped in therapeutic jargon.

Why They Can Post but Still Not Answer You

Here’s the part nobody talks about:

Avoidants can post online, repost TikToks, dance on Instagram, comment on memes, scroll for hours… and still “not have the capacity” to answer you.

Why?
  • Posting online gives them dopamine without vulnerability
  • Scrolling requires no accountability
  • Public engagement doesn’t force honesty
  • Responding to you requires facing guilt and connection

You represent real intimacy. Online, they can stay superficial and safe.
With you, they’d have to be human.

Compassion Isn’t a Coffin

Before the armchair therapists rise from their Instagram altars, let me make something clear:

I am not heartless.

I have held trembling hands at 2 a.m.
I have listened to friends unravel like cheap thread.
I have sat with people whose minds were dim corridors with one flickering lightbulb.

I know suffering.
I’ve lived adjacent to it.
I’ve carried it.

But compassion is not a coffin I’m going to lie down in.

Loving someone doesn’t require self-sacrifice.
I can understand your trauma without letting you use it to avoid accountability.
I can acknowledge your depression without applauding your disappearing act.

Your struggle is real, but so is the wound you left in me.

Suffering explains behavior. It does not sanctify it.

Live, Laugh, Lexapro

Before the whataboutists assemble:

Yes, trauma is real.
Yes, depression is real.
Yes, anxiety is real.

But for the love of Live, Laugh, Lexapro, stop diagnosing every inconvenience as a disorder.
Get evaluated. Get medicated. Get help.
Don’t turn your friends into unpaid therapists.

Not for Nothing — The Leash Remains

Not for nothing, I’ve watched friendship after friendship dissolve under someone’s “bad week that never ends.”

Each time I tried to be patient.
Each time I excused their silence.
Each time, my understanding became a leash.

And that leash dragged me through dark hallways filled with self-doubt, whispering that I was unworthy and disposable.

Suffering does not give anyone the right to carve hollow spaces into the people who love them.

The Culture of Detachment

Why does this keep happening?

I have a theory:

We now live in a culture that worships detachment.
We call it healing.
We call it boundaries.
We call it alignment.

But really, it’s cowardice disguised as enlightenment.

People say:

“I’m busy.”
“I don’t owe anyone anything.”
“If you were a real friend, you’d understand.”

Nobody is that busy. We all carry our phones like rosaries.
We refresh notifications the way monks check prayer hours.

And yes, someone will insist:
“I only use email and I check it once a day.”

They’re lying and ignoring you in advance.

We glamorize detachment because it photographs well on social media.
In real life, it’s just loneliness with a ring light.

A Letter to the Avoidants

To all avoidants:

It takes five seconds — not five hours, not five days — to write:

“I’m alive, but not in the right headspace.”

You can need space and still communicate.
You can be depressed and still apologize.
You can be overwhelmed and still send a sentence.

Healing isn’t a hall pass to abandon people.

Don’t complain about having no friends when we watched you loosen every leash yourself.

The Graveyard of Lost Connections

We cannot build a compassionate world on the corpses of connections we were too anxious to maintain.

When avoidance finally runs out of excuses, what remains isn’t peace. It’s isolation.

Deafening isolation.

The kind that echoes when you realize you pushed away the very people who would have walked through fire for you.

PSA

This piece reflects my opinion and lived experience.
It is not a diagnostic manual.
Mental health is real.
Trauma is real.
Avoidance is real.

So is basic accountability.

If this resonates with you — good.
If it offends you — ask yourself why.

Author’s Note

If you see yourself in these shadows, sit with it.
Light a candle.
Listen for the echo.

Not every disappearance is a mystery. Sometimes it’s a choice.
And sometimes the person you abandoned finally stops waiting at the door.

Cawffe and Complication

A dark, unflinching look at the violence of silence: avoidant friends, emotional withdrawal, and the hollow echoes they leave behind.

As we venture away from crueler times, also known as summer, I can’t help but yearn for that early morning cup of hot black coffee without breaking a sweat. Yes, I’m a psycho and drink hot coffee in 100-degree weather. I rarely drink iced coffee. It’s caffeinated optimism in a plastic cup. I prefer hot coffee because I like to be reminded that in pain and suffering, there’s always more where that comes from: steam, burn, bitterness, the complete suffering sampler.

Speaking of crueler times… Once upon a simpler, crueler time, people actually asked each other out for a cup of coffee. Imagine that: boiling water, burnt beans, and awkward eye contact. Now you’d think suggesting such a thing is akin to asking someone to sign over their soul. One must admit, though, that would at least be more efficient. And yes, I’m always very happy — sometimes even ashamedly smiling — at a cup of espresso. Don’t tell anyone.

     Regretfully, the world has managed to make one of the cheapest, most accessible drinks into a social Everest. Everyone’s a wise guy with hypothetical rock-climbing equipment and perpetually no funds. People swipe, scroll, ghost, and then post essays about “intentional dating” yet can’t stomach the horror of sitting across from another breathing human and holding a cup. A cursed chalice of caffeine, apparently too much to bear.

Don’t get me started on the phrase “intentional dating.” One dates with an intention, good or bad. Why the redundancy? It’s the same affliction that compels people to say, “ATM machine.”

And what if you’re not dating, you ask? What if you just want friends, acquaintances, accomplices, or an alibi? Here’s my metric: if you invite me into your home, I’ll know who you are by whether or not you offer me a cup of coffee. It’s tap water and grounds, but it’s also a litmus test. If you can’t extend even that, then congratulations- you’re not thrifty, you’re spiritually poor.

And yes, I can already hear the protests: “But what if we’re not a coffee-drinking house?” Congratulations, you’ve chosen asceticism. That’s your lifestyle, not my problem. Keep your herbal infusions. This is about coffee, the universal offering, the dark currency of basic human decency. If you don’t drink it yourself, fine. But a true host still keeps a jar of grounds in the pantry, the way one keeps candles for a blackout. Cue the classist police to scream into the void. Alas, I don’t need artisanal pour-overs or beans blessed by monks in Ethiopia. A mug, a gesture, and a little bitterness (in the cup, not just in your personality) will suffice.

But maybe that’s the real gothic tragedy. People would rather pretend they’re above coffee than admit they’re afraid of intimacy. The irony? Coffee is both the cheapest escape and the most honest confrontation. You sip, you talk, you risk the silence. Nothing glamorous about it. Just heat, liquid, and the subtle realization that the person across from you may not even deserve your caffeine.

So yes, in this age of emotional bankruptcy, the measure of generosity is a cup. And if you can’t manage that, then maybe the darkness you carry isn’t romantic or friendly – it’s just empty.

Everything I Didn’t Want to See

I didn’t expect a museum mirror to speak louder than most people in my life.

Framed in mahogany, engraved in gold, Adrian Piper’s Everything #4 waited quietly until I stood in front of it.

I took a photo. But it didn’t feel like a selfie. It felt like a warning.

It’s easy to forget how much we perform when we look into mirrors. Adjust. Pose. Smile. Hide. But this one? This one didn’t play along. It didn’t ask for aesthetics. It demanded honesty. The kind that forces you to see not who you want to be, but who you’ve been avoiding.

As I took a hard look at the phrase “Everything will be taken away”, I can’t help but wonder what conversation this piece of art is trying to strike with me. What was it igniting? Was it mocking me?

Last year, I watched a “golden opportunity” rot in real time because I wouldn’t script someone else’s redemption arc with my pen. They called it a project. I call it a performance, and I wasn’t about to play supporting ghost for someone’s hero complex. The money? Irrelevant. The contract? Blessedly airtight, like a saint’s relic under lock and stained glass.

Or was it the fact that, before one surgery could even happen, I had to make sure a mysterious mass wasn’t something dramatic. It wasn’t. Just two surgeries in three months. My body didn’t get a break. Neither did my spirit.

Speaking of spirit, you know who decided to become one? My best friend and gossip bitch. He left this plane with a kind of audacity I still haven’t forgiven. I now keep a list of songs and bands I can’t play unless I’m ready to fall apart.

Oh, Maureen. It could be worse. You have your health, your family, and a roof over your head.

That’s what I always tell myself. Not today though. I don’t want to think about silver linings. I don’t want to think about glasses half full. How could I when I am left with lead linings and empty glasses?

Shall I be grateful my world only half-collapsed instead of imploding entirely? It’s not comfort. It’s dismissal dressed as wisdom.

How egotistical of me?! As I look in the mirror, I realize it’s a cheap way to dodge my own pain while sitting in the discomfort of it.

I tell no one.

I say nothing.

Everything will be taken away.
When, though?

The Silent Threat

The Silent Threat:
Why Mediocre People Clap the Loudest- for Anyone but You

Yes, I said it. Mediocre.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m mediocre at plenty of things, sewing being one of them. Patterns might as well be cursed scrolls sealed in Latin. But every year, I throw myself into cosplay for New York Comic Con like it’s a life-or-death mission. Last year was a masterpiece of poor timing. I had two surgeries, crutches, and a headpiece that doubled as a medieval torture device. Did I wobble into Comic Con like a half-bedazzled disaster? Yes. Was I proud? Also, yes. Mediocrity with theatrical flair is still a win in my book.

This whole thing pushed me out of my comfort zone. I uploaded a few photos after the Con and didn’t think much of it. The next morning, I woke up to a wave of sweet reactions from friends. No one knew I was on crutches because, frankly, I wasn’t trying to collect pity points. I just wanted to look like a dramatic Gorgon. A few asked what I used, and I even shared some before and after pics of the process. I’ve never been one to hoard knowledge. I was wrong.

One friend, in particular, went full interrogation mode. They had a Halloween party coming up and wanted tips. I didn’t mind sharing. I wasn’t about to treat my Amazon links like launch codes. Later that night, while scrolling through my comments, I noticed something: that same friend hadn’t reacted or commented on my post. Nothing. Huh?

Out of curiosity, I checked last year’s post. Again, no engagement. Apparently, my handmade armor and bruised dignity weren’t worth a single emoji. Ah, intéressant…

Maybe I was bored, or maybe my crutches gave me time to think, but the pattern clicked. This person never congratulated me on anything. Meanwhile, I clapped for them like a possessed seal at every mildly impressive thing they did. It wasn’t because I expected something back. That’s not how I operate.It’s simply something I just do because support is a habit for me.

I felt like emotionally spiraling and decided to scroll through their page and, surprise, they were hyping up content creators and celebrities like they were being paid in exposure and black lipstick. My book had launched around the same time they congratulated someone else for something I can’t even remember.

Here’s my theory

No, I’m not a therapist; I just have a highly suspicious mind and a penchant for overanalyzing human behavior. No, it has nothing to do with my star sign. Some people prefer to support the ultra-successful due to the fact that those people are aspirational and untouchable. It’s the sick idolatry of these people being on another level. They exist on Olympus. They’re not people; they’re a myth. Why? There’s no real threat or comparison. They become brands, not individuals. They become icons to project fantasies onto. Think about that the next time you win a baking competition.

Let’s flip the coffin lid the other way.

People also love to root for those they consider beneath them. That support often comes disguised as empathy, but sometimes it’s just pity with a smug ribbon. These folks are seen as “deserving” because they pose no risk. But give them a little momentum and watch that support shrivel like a Victorian bouquet.

Performative support vs. real encouragement

Now, before I tackle this point like a line-backer, I know some people lack nuance; this only applies if you’ve actually shown up for these people. I’m not talking about random followers. I’m talking about people you’ve poured into.

Performative support is a quick-like, somewhat a vague “you go girl,” or worse, a private DM full of praise they’re too cowardly to post publicly. I call that support in the shadows. Gothic, but not in a good way.

Real encouragement? That’s different. It’s public. It’s consistent. It takes effort. It’s not afraid to stand next to your spotlight instead of resenting it.

The classic defense

“I’m just being real.” Pulease! With whom? If you’re not offering support, advice, or a “damn, you did that,” then you’re not being real. You’re just feeding your ego in a cloak of faux authenticity.

This type of behavior manifests as backhanded compliments, side-eyes, or my personal favorite – total silence. It’s the emotional equivalent of a fog-covered grave, again, not in a Gothic fun way.

Society doesn’t just tolerate envy. It rewards it.

Because envy toward someone close enough to compare yourself to? That’s relatable. That’s marketable. That’s …ugly.

You don’t need the applause of the insecure

Regardless of what you’re doing in life, whether it’s baking, starting a vegan butcher shop, or just posting pictures of your iced coffee, you don’t need the applause of the insecure. Some people can’t clap for you because your rise, or your crawl upward, makes them realize they’re still standing in the same place, arms crossed, doing nothing but watching.