Wayward Piggy

I'm 23 with a writing degree and I don't know what I'm doing with my life. So I decided make a blog about it. xoxo, Cat

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Farewell To The Homesick Generation: on processing the last three decades

He decided that we suffer from great temporal homesickness for the decade we were born in.— Thomas Pynchon I did it: in a covid induced haze, a flock of cartoon blue birds tugged at my heartstrings and bewitched me into purchasing a nostalgic rabbit hole by the name of Disney+. (It should be noted: I have no ardent childlike yearning for spinning teacups or giant plastic castles. As a child I…

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My Misogyny: an american love story

I wrote this back in 2018 after the #MeToo movement gained major traction. I submitted it to Boulevard Magazine’s Non-Fiction contest, and it was eventually chosen as a semi-finalist. But, ultimately, I didn’t win. A lot has changed since I wrote this, and feminism has moved forward rapidly (I guess: my feelings about this are tentative); the ideas I’ve posed in this essay are dated and…

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Depending on What Kind of Mood and Situationship I'm In: an essay about dating, healing & ditching men’s Crocs

A woman gradually learns to not just look,but to squint and to peer, and then, more and more,to suffer no fools. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves My sister said, “People reinvent themselves all the time.” I got my nails painted a shade of brown so dark it looked black. I told my ex I chose the color as a symbol of death and rebirth. He said, “You sound like one of the…

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Eat, Pray, Cry: My Year of Depression and Discontent

Eat, Pray, Cry: My Year of Depression and Discontent

There are times in a woman’s lifewhen she cries and cries and cries,and even though she hasthe succor and support of her loved ones,still and yet she cries. —Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves This year they overturned Roe v. Wade and I hardly cared because I felt like I was in love. Of course I still listened to the podcasts; to the descriptions of women looking dejected…

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Notes From a Break-Up: on dating with borderline personality disorder

Notes From a Break-Up: on dating with borderline personality disorder

Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole andemotionally ‘together’—when subjectively we feel dispersed and confused. —Alain de Bottom, Essays in Love I could almost hear the record scratch: one minute I was in a four year relationship, and the next I was making out with a 24 year old in a 7/11 parking lot. (He was my…

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Self Help For My Twenty Something Year Old Self

Self Help For My Twenty Something Year Old Self

Baby girl no one’s gonna feel the pain for you.—Lorde, “Secrets from a Girl” The eyes and the faces all turned themselves toward me,and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread,I stepped into the room.—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar ____ Once upon a time, on the precipice of turning 20, a girl spread your cards into a strategic formation across the table at a booth in a restaurant. She told…

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Somewhere, We Are a School of Fish

Somewhere, We Are a School of Fish

For Mason I saw a man emerge from the fog as if he were born from it,and I thought, This is a peak experience, because I knew it was about to end.—Chelsea Hodson, ‘The New Love’Or was it lesseloquent than that, purely muscular,some meaningless twitch?—Stephen Dunn, ‘Zero Hour’ An infographic says: “We are a collection of moments.” And I instantly think: Glasses. I think of being in the eleventh…

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Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well’ (10 Minute Version): a reflection on power imbalance & age gap love

Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well’ (10 Minute Version): a reflection on power imbalance & age gap love

I used to think the gap between us would shrink as I grew older,but it’s still as wide as it’s ever been. — Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa You can’t just run stoplights and ignore me.That’s not what a relationship is. — Alison Espach, The Adults There is an opening scene from Woody Allen’s Manhattan that has stuck with me ever since I first saw it: it begins with Isaac, the film’s…

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My Steady Conversion from a Pro-Life Evangelical to a Pro-Choice Ally: an in depth look at the abortion issue

My Steady Conversion from a Pro-Life Evangelical to a Pro-Choice Ally: an in depth look at the abortion issue

First, you will not tell anyone my name.Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.—Dr. John Sharpe to Gloria Steinem✦✧✦✧ My earliest introduction to the issue of abortion, and, consequently, the adult world of politics, occurred when I was eight years old, in the midst of the 2000 presidential election. I was at a friend’s house, contemplating two American flag-printed Beanie…

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Susan Sontag & Donald Trump in the Time of Coronavirus: on looking for meaning where there is none

Susan Sontag & Donald Trump in the Time of Coronavirus: on looking for meaning where there is none

How to explain, in a culture frantic for resolution, that sometimes the shit stays messy? —Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts ____ Sometime within the first 24 hours of 2020, I received a text message from a former friend who I’d been actively avoiding in the weeks leading up to the New Year. (I can hardly recall the exact details of our falling out. Its subject matter is so wrapped up in my own…

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Edward Cullen, Slender Man and the Power of Rescue Fantasies: what “Twilight” meant to me as a teenage girl

Edward Cullen, Slender Man and the Power of Rescue Fantasies: what “Twilight” meant to me as a teenage girl

Which of us, in our impressionable teenage years, has not displaced an irrational horror of sex into a freaky emo crush on a moody vampire with sky-high cheek bones and taste for human blood?

—Peter Bradshaw

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Dear reader, today I am writing to you in hopes of answering a very pressing and existential question: Is the Twilight Saga feminist?

It’s a question I only started to…

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Women, MLMs, Corporate America & the American Dream: How We Love to be Convinced that Our Problems are an Easy Fix

Women, MLMs, Corporate America & the American Dream: How We Love to be Convinced that Our Problems are an Easy Fix

Get caught in the race Of this crazy life Tryin’ to be everything Can make you lose your mind I just wanna go back in time To American honey

—Lady Antebellum, “American Honey”

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I was on a mother-daughter retreat when another woman’s daughter slathered a glob of foundation all over my face, took a step back, and said, “That looks much better.”

This happened during the Mary Kay portion of the…

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Exercises in Compassion: On Being Diagnosed with PTSD

Exercises in Compassion: On Being Diagnosed with PTSD

Stress is the concept that explains how sociocultural conditions drive people mad.

— Paul Adams

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A few days ago, while watching reruns of The Real Housewives of New York City, Bethenny Frankel had a full blown panic attack as she revealed that her restraining order against her ex-husband (who stalked and harassed her) was about to expire.

This scene, in itself, wasn’t shocking to me. (All the…

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I am Insatiable and Proud (From Me To Me, Through a Worm-Hole)

I am Insatiable and Proud (From Me To Me, Through a Worm-Hole)

To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.

—Ralph Ellison

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If I were to write this as some kind of list it’d say: 1.) No one is a decent person in their twenties… and then that would be the end of it.

If I were to recount every disappointing NYE party I’ve ever endured, I wouldn’t know which one to choose: the one I spent with an ex-boyfriend, stone cold sober, and weeping behind his back…

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According to Urban Dictionary I’m a Swiftie: Why? I couldn’t figure out how I felt hour to hour. Sometimes I felt like: All these things taught me something that I never could have learned in a way that didn’t hurt as much.

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I’m Not You & That Academy Award Isn’t Yours It takes hard work to say, “This is how I am,” in a calm voice, without anxiously addressing how you should be.

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On Evolving Dreams & "Starting Over"

On Evolving Dreams & “Starting Over”

I bet you get yourself into these situations all the time… Where you cause all this trouble, and you have no idea why. My opinion? You’re doing it to distract yourself from the kind of person you’re meant to be… She might not look like what you pictured when you were 16. Her job might not be cool. Her hair might not be flowing like a mermaid. And she might be really serious about something, or…

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