I blinked through tears as the words caught in my throat, “I should report this.” I was 17 years old and school had let out for the day. It was sunny and warm and my boyfriend and I had plans to hang out and enjoy the weather. He was the one who found the envelope with my name colorfully written across it. Someone had slipped it into the open sunroof of his Volkswagen. The words inside were anything but colorful. They were dark, ugly, and mean. They encouraged me to take my own life, they called me worthless. They were authored by three girls I had, up until that very moment, thought were my friends. 

When I was still part of the working world, I was forever crafting mile-long to-do lists, oftentimes writing down things I’d already completed just for the thrill of striking them through with a heavy-handed double line. If you flipped through my spiral notebook with the green patterned whales on the cover, you’d see each day’s minutiae penciled carefully into uniform lines—every task from showering to laundry folding to playdating—satisfyingly crossed out as each is completed. I thrived on the feeling of contentment I got from seeing a day of hard work spelled out on the page, tangible and real.