Endpaper
Kaitlyn Language Endpaper
Two cartoon-ish figures — a mother and a daughter — in space, with the latter spiraling out of orbit from the former. Set against a background of stars which take the shape of Chinese characters or English letters.
On Display
By letting someone into my space, albeit virtually, I can share with them how I see the world.
Bachelor Sports Fan
The author will be the first to criticize the Bachelor franchise, which she's been watching for seven years. But how different is being a Bachelor fan from being an avid sports fan, really?
Kaitlyn Endpaper 4
A waterfall on Saratoga Creek, which runs through the author's hometown — her favorite place to slow down and decompress.
Kaitlyn Endpaper 2
Sunlight illuminates the trees on the author's favorite hiking trail in Villa Montalvo.
Growth and Decay
In a time when I felt I had nothing, not even a sense of who I was, I remembered that the earth gives me — gives us — so many gifts that I don’t have to work to earn or prove myself worthy of.
On Finstas and Fractured Selves
My New Year’s resolution was to try my best to stop taking everything so damn seriously: do more, think less, lower the stakes. I wanted to do whatever possible to get out of my own head — to reconnect with the humor and voice I felt like I had lost, to move through and inside of my life instead of adjacent to it.
Bad Plant Mom
Plenty of people kill their plants, but I shouldn’t be one of them. Plants motivate much of my art and writing; I’m taking a plant biology course and researching forests for my thesis. There’s an embarrassing dissonance between how much I care about plants and how little I manage to take care of them.
The Endless Cycle of Nostalgia
On the first day of freshman year, I printed out and hung up an Andy Bernard quote from “The Office” that read: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”
Our Neighbor Totoro
I’ve rewatched the movie countless times over the past decade. If I had a comfort food, it would be this film. But that’s not to say I find it completely comforting. The older I grow, the less I feel like My Neighbor Totoro is a kids’ movie. Its mesmerizing surrealism can no longer hide the profound sadness of two girls missing their mother as they struggle to grow up.
Thick Blood
"I thought that my throat was closing up every morning. That my heart would suddenly stop. That I might choke on my dinner and require an emergency tracheotomy. "
From Me, in Cambridge, with Love
Letters sent by mail are outdated, yes. But they are snapshots of time, the culmination of a friend’s life between the day they mailed their last letter and the moment they sat down to write this new one.
Are We Home Yet?
At the time, everyone thought the virus would pass in two months. I thought I’d get home by July 2020. It’s September 2021, and I haven’t been home for 20 months.