My change of circumstance made me hyperaware of what I wanted everyone to see: a woman in charge of herself. A Strong Woman Doing Well On Her Own. A woman (I’m sorry) thriving. The logic was this: if I looked good I was doing well, in a way that anyone could see before I opened my mouth. I was tired of the gentle arm squeezes and soft-eyed how-you-holding-ups, of people checking in to make sure I was “taking care of myself”. I figured that becoming inarguably, conventionally attractive would cut them off at the pass, giving them a narrative they understood (“glow up” is a universal language) and saving myself the trouble of figuring out what I actually felt. I was comforted by the cut-throat simplicity of it: to be hot was to be doing well. Better than before, better than him. Better than other, weaker people who are broken by something as small as grief. I didn’t pause for a minute to consider how unhealthy it was to look on a breakup as a competition. I just knew that I did not want to be a loser. I wanted to be the winner, and very hot. […] It became clear that my post-breakup plans were unlikely to materialise: I would glow laterally at best. But I kept going, no longer in service of being seen, but to luxuriate in not being so. I know many if not most people attend Spin class because it makes their butts look good. But I’m sure there are others, like me, who are there because it makes them feel like their butt, and the rest of them, have dissolved into a fine mist.

We can decline. We can change our patterns. Identity is far deeper than any of these labels and habits. We are not what we do, or even how we do it or why. We are what we feel. Identity is in the surge when you recognize unverifiable truth, or the pang when something snaps that you can't see, or the way you know that you love something you'd never even contemplated. We are not the sum of our fears or our atrophies or our helplessnesses, we are the product of our hopes and our surprise and our inexplicable instincts. We are broken as a test; we are repaired as a challenge. We contain divinity and infinity and infamy. We are beautiful under these terrible layers and clothes, in motion where we sit, warm in these climes, improvised in panic. We can walk away from the stories they're trying to sell us, and write our own. If they hang on us, we can throw them off. If they pursue us, we can run.