I ended the call before she could provide additional instructions for attracting a married middle-aged man who still had all his hair. For several seconds, I stood in the middle of my kitchen, holding the phone against my palm.
I leaned against the counter, suffocating under the weight of my own endless waiting. I was constantly waiting until I felt prepared enough to actually enter my own life – waiting to reach out to people until I knew the perfect thing to say, waiting to apply for better opportunities until my portfolio was beyond critique. But waiting hadn’t protected me. It had just kept me trapped in place, alone in a quiet room.
I should have been used to the silence since I had lived alone for several years now. Nobody moved my things. Nobody left dishes in the sink. Nobody interrupted me while I worked.
It was peaceful. Not lonely.
At least that’s what I told anyone who pressed.
I returned to my desk and started the process of taking out a cash advance through my credit card. It wasn’t a great solution, but it would get me through the slump. Then, I logged into my work email, hoping productivity might repair whatever the phone call had unsettled. Instead, thirty-two unread emails appeared.
I stared at the number. Then refreshed, because I wanted to be certain the suffering was current.
Thirty-three.
Fuck me.
It was Saturday, but I had nothing better to do. And if I didn’t pare my inbox down, I’d hate myself on Monday morning.
The first message came from a boutique fitness studio owner who’d requested “clean, elevated minimalism” for her rebrand. I’d sent three options featuring neutral colors, restrained typography, and open spacing.
Hi Sloane,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful concepts. After conducting a deep, energetic review, I think the designs may be too minimal. Could we make them more bold, expressive, youthful, luxurious, playful, timeless, and edgy while preserving the clean simplicity?
I read and reread the request, hoping the words would eventually develop a relationship with one another if I read them enough times.
They did not.
The next email came from a wedding planner who wanted to know whether I could make the invitation suite “less floral” despite having rejected my first two drafts for not being floral enough.
Another client had attached a logo generated by an artificial intelligence program and asked if I could recreate it exactly, but with cleaner lines, different colors, another font, and “a more original icon.”
Someone else had used artificial intelligence to write six paragraphs of critique about a poster I had designed. The feedback included phrases such as enhance visual storytelling, leverage emotional hierarchy, and create a more resonant design ecosystem.
It contained no practical instructions.
I opened the attachment and discovered a photograph of a woman with seven fingers holding a wineglass that appeared to be growing from her wrist.
Beneath it, the client had written: Can you do something along these lines? We really love how premium it feels.
I sat back.
I had developed a professional process for dealing with impossible feedback. First, I translated the client’s emotional reaction into a practical concern. Then, I asked precise follow-up questions. After that, I offered controlled options that prevented them from turning the entire project into an endless wandering exercise.
It was a good system, and it worked most of the time. Unfortunately, using it required a functioning nervous system. Mine had left the building sometime around the phrase silver fox.
I opened a new reply and typed.
Thank you for your feedback. To make sure I’m understanding your goals correctly
–
I stopped typing. The sentence looked reasonable. It sounded mature and competent. It sounded like it came from a woman who owned matching storage containers and remembered to buy new spinach before the old spinach liquefied in the fridge.
I hated her. I wasn’t her.
I deleted what I wrote, closed the browser, and stood.
I needed a break before I replied to anyone with the honesty they hadn’t technically purchased.
So, I was going to make cupcakes.
Baking had begun as an act of minor rebellion when I was thirteen. My mother didn’t keep sweets in the house because we all needed to watch our weight.
There’d always been almonds available for snacks, though.
Raw almonds. Roasted almonds. Individual bags of almonds for emergencies I never encountered. My mother carried them in her purse and ate six at a time, claiming they were surprisingly filling. They weren’t. Six almonds were barely worth mentioning.
If I wanted cookies, cake, or anything containing enough sugar to create happiness, I had to make it myself.
I started with boxed mixes, then I learned that flour, sugar, butter, and eggs could become almost anything if I followed instructions carefully enough. I liked the reliability. I liked that measurements mattered and results could be reproduced. I liked knowing that if something went wrong, I could usually identify the reason and correct it the next time.
Too much flour.
Butter too warm.
Oven temperature incorrect.
Baking never told me I had misunderstood the assignment after approving the sketch.
After putting some music on, I pulled my hair into a messy bun on top of my head, then gathered the ingredients. The kitchen was small enough that I could reach nearly everything without taking more than two steps, which suited both the apartment and my general lifestyle.
I creamed the butter and sugar while an old pop song played through the tiny speaker near the sink. The beat reached that spot behind my ribs before anxiety could object. I moved around the kitchen, adding eggs one at a time and using the wooden spoon as a microphone between steps.
I didn’t sing well, but that had never stopped me.
There were entire pieces of myself that only appeared when nobody else was around. The version of me who danced while waiting for water to boil. The one who made dramatic facial expressions at the oven and narrated minor household tasks in an accent that belonged to no known country. The one who laughed at her own thoughts instead of inspecting them for flaws.
She came out when I read and drew and baked.
Solitary activities with clear boundaries gave her room to exist. There was no audience, no evaluation, and no possibility that someone would ask why I hadn’t done it better.
I added the dry ingredients gradually and folded them into the batter. My arms tired sooner than they should have, but that happened sometimes.
I knew I was too thin. Not fashionably thin. Not elegant or delicate in the way strangers occasionally implied when they said things such as you’re so lucky to have such a high metabolism, or
I wish I forgot to eat.
I didn’t forget exactly. I postponed.
Eating required groceries. Groceries required money, planning, gas for transportation, storage, preparation, and the emotional resilience to watch produce decay after I lost interest in whatever meal I’d intended to make.
Keeping an adult human body properly fed was unreasonably demanding. Three meals every day? The repetition seemed excessive. I knew this was not ideal, but I also still got my period regularly, which I’d decided meant things could not be that bad. Surely my body would submit a more formal complaint if the situation became urgent.
I would make a meal plan, eventually. A real one that contained protein, vegetables, healthy fats, and the correct carb ratio. Things that required chopping.
Next week.
I snorted. I had been planning to begin next week for nearly eight months.
I slid the tray into the oven, set a timer, and licked batter from the spoon despite every warning about raw eggs I’d ever read.
It tasted worth the risk.
While the cupcakes baked, I made simple vanilla frosting. Powdered sugar escaped the bowl and covered part of the counter, my shirt, and one sock. I kept dancing.
For twenty minutes, my apartment didn’t feel lonely.
The scent of butter, vanilla, and sugar permeated the air. Music filled the rooms. I sang into the spoon and imagined an audience that had paid heavily for the privilege. In my version, they were moved by the performance. Several cried. One woman near the front reconsidered her marriage.
The timer interrupted my encore.
The cupcakes had risen properly, their tops pale gold and rounded. I set them near the window to cool and cleaned the kitchen, which was the least believable part of my fantasy, but necessary if I wanted to use the counter again.
When they were finally ready, I frosted them, then added the colored sugar I had bought before Christmas and never used.
I arranged the cupcakes on a tray and took a picture. For a moment, I considered posting it somewhere. But I hadn’t used social media in nearly four months because every platform made me feel like everyone else had figured out how to live life perfectly while I was still trying to complete the private tutorial on basic adult life skills.
I ate one at the kitchen counter. It was soft and sweet, the frosting slightly too rich. It was delicious.
I ate a second more slowly, then looked at the remaining ten. My stomach was full.
The tray sat between my hands, looking cheerful and ridiculous.
Ten cupcakes. One person.
The math was unkind.
I could freeze them. Probably. I could eat one every day until the frosting began to taste like the inside of my refrigerator. I could leave some in the apartment lobby with a note, although all the tenants in the building had recently received an email about unauthorized food distribution after someone abandoned a slow cooker of chili near the mailboxes.
My next thought was Missy. It arrived so naturally that I reached for my phone before remembering why I shouldn’t.
My cousin had always loved vanilla cupcakes. When we were kids, she ate the frosting first and saved the cake for last, which I considered both chaotic and impressive. We had spent most of our childhood together, then high school, then college breaks, each period connected by the assumption that whatever changed around us would not change us.
Things had changed anyway.
I opened our message thread. The most recent text was from Missy, sent nine days earlier.
Missy: Thinking about you. You should come by sometime. No pressure. I miss you.
The message before that was also hers.
Missy: I know things are weird, but I’d really like to see you.
I scrolled farther back without meaning to. There were pictures. An invitation. A few messages I had answered hours or days later with apologies about work. More messages I hadn’t answered at all.
A hard feeling moved through me. I didn’t call it guilt. Guilt implied I had done something wrong, and I was not prepared to make that determination.
Something had shifted between us; that was true. Missy had changed. Her life had changed, and every conversation had become crowded with things I didn’t know how to respond to. She had developed a new rhythm, one I couldn’t enter without feeling that I was interrupting.
Maybe she had stopped needing me. Maybe she only invited me because she felt obligated.
There were reasons. I was sure there were reasons.
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