Bad Friend Art
Colin Farrell’s friend breakup in ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ is eerily similar to my own. His is just more cinematic.
Colin Farrell’s friend breakup in ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ is eerily similar to my own. His is just more cinematic.
Where does my style begin and his taste end? My suitcase is overflowing with meaning I can’t handle anymore.
As a queer person, I’d had no role models growing up, had to stumble through every relationship, learning how to love as best I could. Dog fostering was a kind of parallel crash course.
I’m embracing the label, with all its yearning, try-hard connotations, because desire shouldn’t be embarrassing and love does require trying hard.
My identity is tied up in my singleness, my childlessness, and I’m not sure I want to let that go.
Like many immigrant daughters, I’m of a lineage of women who didn’t put themselves first.
I’m not sure I want to be vulnerable or join a community. I’m not sure I even remember how.
The group chat is a means, not an end. Not what our friendship is, but what keeps it alive.
I wondered how I would confront what I thought was my worst: my sexuality.
It was an acrimonious divorce. I wanted justice. I settled for truth.
In any serious picture of me, I am not comfortable enough to look directly into the lens. I don’t know if I will ever be.
Promiti Islam on queerness, Bengali-American identity, and the complexities of family acceptance,
I wondered: Who was I when I first formed this friendship?
I didn’t want it to make sense—to send my children away for who knows how long—but I did need them to survive. I needed to survive.
Distance, though it may be physically distancing, need not make a couple grow distant.
For a decade I’d tricked myself into believing I was happily married, never thinking there could come a time when the trick no longer worked.
I discovered breakdancing in that VHS time capsule, and that was as close as I’d ever get to a culture that did not exist where I lived.
Nora Feely on loss during the pandemic, chosen families, and the small but devastating things 2020 took away.
I know my neighbors now a little bit better than before.
I was already in love with all my friends. But in my newfound singleness, I was falling in love with them more deeply.