Maybe it happens when you’re out with friends. Your partner hasn’t texted you in a while, and you’ve been out for hours. You wonder why they haven’t bothered to check in.

Or maybe it happens when you’re looking through their phone. You’re about to navigate to Grubhub to order yourselves a pizza when all of a sudden, a racy message pops up on the screen from an unknown sender. What could this mean?

Or maybe it happens when you’re at home, alone and in bed, and it occurs to you: they were late for work again. And it’s Friday.

Whenever…

Over quarantine, I got fat.

And I don’t mean it in an I-gained-five-pounds-and-my-stomach-puffs-out-a-little-more-now way. I mean, I actually got fat. I gained upwards of thirty pounds. My body looks completely different. I am working on accepting it for what it is and developing a better relationship with food and exercise. I’ll get there. But all of that is beside the point.

Gaining weight, however, has been eye-opening. It’s provided me a perspective into what fat people experience on the daily. I used to read about fatphobia and thin privilege a lot before I got fat, and I believed what I…

Why haven’t I gone viral on Medium yet?

If you’re like me, you’ve probably asked yourself this question countless times. This ever-present question consumed me when I first joined Medium, and I expected it to go away — but it didn’t. Little did I know, I would only stop asking this question when I went viral and found out how the whole thing really works.

And you might be days away from that accomplishment, too. Who can ever predict when a story might go viral or when one month will be full of abundant earnings? And yes, some of it…

By now, I’m sure most of you have heard about toxic positivity.

It’s a trending topic, and people are flooding the Internet with stories and grievances and arguments about it.

Essentially, toxic positivity is optimism to a fault — the idea of being overly positive to a point where it becomes unnecessary and even damaging, especially in places and times when it is essential to have space to feel things other than constant happiness.

Examples of toxic positivity include the ever-popular phrase “Good vibes only” and the encouragement of friends who preach to “always look on the bright side.” News…

Date rape*: (noun) rape committed by someone with whom the victim has gone on a date.

(verb) force (a person with whom one has gone on a date) to have sex against their will.

*Also synonymous with “acquaintance rape” and often used in the contexts of drugs labelled “date rape drugs,” like roofies.

It’s a common term. Most of us have probably heard it. It’s discussed often, especially in places like on college campuses (think fraternities), bars, clubs, etc. where people are raped (and often drugged beforehand). …

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve hated my breasts.

There was a time when they looked normal and I was semi-fine with them. But for most of my life, I’ve resented them. First, I was the early bloomer, the girl who went through puberty before everyone else and therefore was stared at for my breasts in middle school. And then, even when it became normal, they didn’t stop growing. They gave me back pain and made it so my clothes didn’t fit and they weren’t perky enough and compared to other women I knew, they felt far too big.

…

I’ll never forget the day I heard the news.

It was many years ago; I was in high school. It was my birthday. It was bitterly cold outside, and I was leaned against a brick wall by the front door, waiting for my ride.

My friend came up to me, frantic. She was shouting my name. I looked up from my phone, my eyes wide. I was a little freaked. “What is it?” I asked softly.

And then she told me.

My ex-boyfriend had been in an accident.

He had fallen on ice and hit his head on his porch…

We’ve all been hearing whispered news about Medium’s Partner Program getting a makeover since early this summer.

Rumors were tossed around. Would they continue with the writer bonuses? Shift to ad revenue in order to generate more profit? Start paying writers a consistent monthly stipend on top of their earnings? Allow readers to “tip” a writer if they liked their story? The possibilities were endless.

And then we finally got the news.

Starting in January 2022, writers must have at least 100 followers in order to be eligible for the Partner Program — which means you can’t be paid unless…