Virgins Anonymous: or, The Time I Almost Lost My Virginity to a Twitter Mutual

You ever been so down bad you let a stranger you've been low-key stalking stay at your apartment?

I had never met a stranger from the internet before. (I had never used a dating app, never talked to an anonymous user online.) But here he was now, this person I forged completely inside my head, who up until that point I had only spoken to over the phone or FaceTime. It was overcast and the memory is hazy, but not because of the weather.

I was twenty-one years old, a college senior at an expensive film school in Orange County, California I had grown increasingly disaffected with, and was, of course, a virgin. I had engaged in oral sex—both giving and receiving—with a boy during an on-and-off situationship when I was nineteen, so I guess I was more like half a virgin. But in Biblical terms I was still a virgin; I had never had vaginal intercourse.

I was pretentious at the time, harbored a fragile god complex, but worst of all, had nothing to show for it. I spent my exorbitant amount of free time watching foreign films from the sixties on my laptop, believing I possessed such worldly knowledge my peers would never understand. I did nothing but seethe and hate anyone who wasn’t as miserable as I was—then wonder why no one liked me.

I was online, but only as a passive spectator. I never interacted with anyone unless I knew them in real life. As a teenager, I was afraid every online stranger was a pedophile murderer rapist waiting to groom me (although I had not yet heard of “grooming”). I suppose this protected me from ever getting preyed upon, but being isolated in real life and online put me in an untouchable bubble, pushing me deeper into loneliness.

I made an AIM account (AOL Instant Messenger) in the seventh grade, and I found for the first time in my life I could speak to others the way I wished I could in real life, albeit virtually. The digital realm provided just enough distance from reality to give me the confidence to be myself again. In meatspace (aka IRL), my classmates noticed this dichotomy and would say to me, “You’re so different online!” which was news to me. I had yet to realize that they merely saw me as a “quiet girl,” leaving their interpretation of who I was entirely up to their uninformed perception—something I had no control over.

This newfound confidence was short-lived. When my real life relationships began to suffer because of AIM—because I was never good at keeping secrets, loved to gossip and spread rumors like the teenage girl I was—I began to develop social media anxiety. The internet was no longer a safe place for me to express my thoughts without fear of reprisal; it became another outlet in which I was policed and could be punished for my actions. But understanding that actions have consequences is just part of growing up.

Then came Xanax. Oh, Xanax! I was nineteen years old when the psychiatrist at my expensive university diagnosed me with social phobia disorder and put me on the generic version of Xanax, alprazolam. She started me on 0.5mg, then 1mg, and finally, by the time this story takes place, 2mg of yellow alprazolam bars pressed with R039.

For simplicity, I’ll refer to the medication as Xanax, but technically I was taking alprazolam. The psychiatrist prescribed me thirty bars of Xanax a month. Unbeknownst to her, I had begun to abuse it, badly. I would often double my dose, leading to blackouts of memory. I found I could become manic if I overdosed, a side effect of taking the medication while clinically depressed. I would lie to my psychiatrist about not being depressed so I could keep getting Xanax.

I thought the Xanax was helping me. It made me more social, melted away my icy exterior and allowed me to be manic, happy, and stupid. There was no reason for me to be smart; it had gotten me nowhere. Not only because I was a girl, but because it wasn’t math or science I was good at, so it didn’t matter anyway. I knew I was going to be an unemployable loser once I graduated, that the degrees I chose to double major in (English and Screenwriting) relegated me to a position only good for a twenty-dollar-an-hour secretary, if I were so lucky. Might as well dumb myself down, chemically lobotomize myself so people would like me more. Or so I thought.

I knew that once I graduated in a few months, my parents would help me pack up my belongings and drive me straight home to San Jose, California, where I’d likely live for the rest of my life. My mother would have liked that. (If that statement shocks you, it’s because your mother isn’t a first generation immigrant). My parents would never, and still would never, pay my rent to live in any city just because I wanted to.

I deplored those poor little rich girls who would post about their drug abuse and self-harm scars and eating disorders online for attention—they clearly had never suffered as I had. I blamed it on California, as exhibited by characters written by Bret Easton Ellis. Like, gee, maybe if you didn’t crash after a coke bender every weekend you wouldn’t be so fucking depressed? He wrote about the kind of people I loathed, and if only I read his work before entering college, maybe I would have better understood where they were coming from. While I’ve turned around and come to appreciate Ellis, I was reminded of this funny review I wrote of Less Than Zero back in 2019:

There have been studies on how low-income boys engaged in more antisocial behavior when living alongside more affluent neighbors. In retrospect, I recognize that I too was exhibiting antisocial behaviors from a young age, and, in some ways, this stemmed from my anger and jealousy towards my spoiled peers at the private Catholic schools I attended. My family was never truly poor, but my parents, on high school teacher salaries, had made the choice to put their four children (including me) through private school. For many years, money was a point of contention.

They say that depression is anger turned inwards, and I was a very angry child—but I only expressed that anger at home. At school, I was a quiet, polite little girl, considered “smart” merely on account of how dumb everyone else was. My issues never boiled over into what my parents would consider an actual problem—failing classes, getting into trouble at school—so they did their best to just ignore them.

I had many chances to develop and keep friendships, but for some reason, I wanted to destroy everything nice, because I felt I did not deserve happiness. This only worsened after puberty. I have been an avid Tumblr user since I was thirteen years old, which I would sometimes use to complain vaguely about my life. I only had around two hundred followers, so I was surprised when I received a singular anonymous hate message. I cherish that one message to this day, as I could not believe anyone cared enough about me, a random sixteen-year-old girl at the time, to send anonymous hate. They hit the nail right on the head, too:

These unresolved issues, muted and repressed by my Xanax abuse as a young adult living away from home, pushed me to message someone I’d never met in an attempt to lose my virginity. I thought, if I have sex with this guy, at least I’d have something. Maybe he’d even want me to be his girlfriend; maybe I could move to New York, where he attended [redacted] as an undergraduate senior.

His name was Victor—just kidding, that’s not his real name, but it will be for the purpose of this story. His username at the time was @[redacted]. A former high school classmate of mine was friends with his now ex-girlfriend, and this girl had posted a link on Facebook of an interview with Victor, because he had recently written a play accepted by Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In the interview, he mentioned that his play was inspired by Lysistrata by Aristophanes, and I thought it was so cool he knew ancient Greek plays, that he must be a smart guy. I was jealous of his success, as we were the same age, yet I had produced nothing worthy of note.

Cut to four years later. I was twenty-one years old, in my last year as an undergraduate. I was following him from a new Twitter account I had created for the sole purpose of lurking on cool strangers, primarily Brandon Wardell, as mentioned in my previous post. In a way, I must have viewed Victor as a more accessible version of Wardell; they were both standup comedians and very active on Twitter. Victor’s bio at the time was “TV writer that’s never written for TV.”

I had been following Victor for years at that point, always wanting to reach out, to be friends, but I never had the courage. The account from which I was following him, which has since been permanently deactivated, was @radicalsadgirl. Not radical as in radical feminism but just radical in general, taken from an Egon Schiele exhibition titled “The Radical Nude” (as I mentioned, I was pretentious).

This burner account was meant to be a mausoleum of my darkest, most depressing thoughts, a crypt hidden from prying eyes, never meant to see the light of day. Yet in a fit of Xanax-induced mania, I un-privated the account, and released the hounds of hell. Before doing so, I had accepted what few follower requests I had, and with now six followers in tow, I decided to send Victor a DM request:

me: Hey you followed me on insta a while back then unfollowed lol (I’m clarissa). You seem really chill and your recent tweets resonate w/me just bc I’ve been going thru some shit too. I’d love a follow back & if you’re down wanna be internet friends??

2019-01-18 12:04:33



It was winter break and I was in my childhood bedroom in San Jose. I had just taken Xanax, and I felt the dull, sweet nothingness swelling in my mind. I immediately regretted the decision to have sent such a message, assumed he must have thought I was some stalker creep, so I turned off my phone and crawled under my Strawberry Shortcake comforter. I tried to sleep, with my phone beneath my pillow, just in case.

Excitement kept me awake, and I couldn’t help but sneak one more look. To my surprise, there was a notification from him:

[redacted]: Hey what’s up :)

2019-01-18 18:32:26

[redacted]: I remember your profile but have we ever met?

2019-01-18 18:32:35


I couldn’t believe it, although part of me had earnestly been expecting him to respond. There was something about Xanax that made my desires, things I’d only daydreamed about, become reality. Xanax provided me the synthetic courage required to live the life I believed I was meant to all along. I responded right away, putting on the manic rizz:

me: No we haven’t I live in California

2019-01-18 20:08:13

me: I know this is gonna sound weird but I honestly started following you bc ur like a minor celeb kinda, I read an article abt a play you wrote (this was years ago) because some girl on Facebook shared it and I’ve followed you ever since.

2019-01-18 20:09:07

[redacted]: That’s actually really cool

2019-01-18 20:11:32



After that I knew we had a good start that could lead somewhere. We messaged the entire night. He must have assumed my goal was to hook up, as it quickly took a horny turn. Our conversation went through the typical recapitulations of strangers flirting online. At first it was about horoscopes. He was a Gemini sun and Taurus moon; I was a Taurus sun and a Gemini moon. It was a match made by the heavens: “why aren’t we making babies rn wtf,” he typed.

After he didn’t respond for a while, I asked him if he fell asleep.

[redacted]: I’m here. Perplexed by your whole shtick

2019-01-19 09:59:22

[redacted]: If i was going to sleep i would have ages ago

2019-01-19 09:59:30

me: whats my shtick

2019-01-19 09:59:44

[redacted]: Figuring it all out

2019-01-19 09:59:55

me: im glad were internret friends bc people irl suck

2019-01-19 10:00:05

[redacted]: Idk if ur horny lonely or bored

2019-01-19 10:00:13

[redacted]: people online suck too

2019-01-19 10:00:21

[redacted]: Everyone sucks and there’s only like 2/3 outliers irl or url

2019-01-19 10:00:33

me: url nevr heard that one

2019-01-19 10:00:53

[redacted]: It’s not even a real anthesis to irl it just works tho

2019-01-19 10:01:07

me: i am lonely and bored possibly horny but i feel weird being horny in my parents house

2019-01-19 10:01:35

me: maybe th reason ur talking to me is bc ur in ur childhood home. the planets would not have aligned otherwise

2019-01-19 10:02:23

[redacted]: There’s no reason i should be sad lonely or horny but here i am the holy trifecta

2019-01-19 10:03:35



My goal, initially, was not to sleep with him. But he seemed horny enough to like me, and I knew I could use sex as a way to keep his attention. I thought I would come to like him more, knowing it would help me in the long run, help me escape my own oblivion.

Our virtual correspondence went on for a lot longer than I thought it would. Weeks turned into months, turned into phone calls, then FaceTime calls, then FaceTime “sex,” the first time I’d done that sort of thing. He knew I was a virgin, but I think he would forget at times. “Have you ever had really long sex?” he asked me once, then quickly retracted: “Wait, you’ve never had sex.” I was certain this fact surprised him, as he had gone through a number of relationships at that point and would in fact be considered “ran through.” He couldn’t believe I was a virgin.

I don’t remember what the FaceTime sex was like, since I was never a big masturbator (by hand, anyway). I probably just watched him jerk off while we FaceTimed, maybe I showed him my tits.

We decided we would meet up when our Spring Breaks overlapped. He was planning to visit friends in L.A. and I invited him to stay one night in my university apartment in Anaheim, with the unspoken expectation of sex. 

Although I had given oral sex to completion, the favor was never returned, and I had never had an orgasm. I did not know how to touch myself, and anyway—I was too afraid of God’s smite. He was always watching. The Catholic guilt was hereditary. My mother, born in Mexico, was Catholic, but her devotion had taken a severe turn within the last ten years. She was listening to a lot of Catholic Radio, an AM station that was pushing her further right than the rest of the family. The radio station abused her earnest faith in Catholicism, especially her anti-abortion sentiments. She took us to anti-abortion rallies, one was called “Walk for Life.”

I never shared those same sentiments. In defiance of her, I wrote my English senior thesis in college on abortion plots in twentieth century American literature. But the unspoken religious trauma that was passed down onto me could still be felt. Sex was never discussed; it was a topic of much shame and fear. The only advice my mother gave my older sister, once she got a boyfriend, was, “You have to keep the baby.”

The Xanax, which lowered my sexual guard online, also allowed me to lower my guard and make more friends in real life. I was getting close to a classmate I’ll call Julie. On a drunken night out, I had mentioned Victor to her, how we were going to meet to have sex. When I explained that I had never had an orgasm before, she was shocked. A few days later, she brought me a life-changing item: a Womanizer, the lewdly named clit-sucking sex toy. She had an extra one, promised it was unused, and out of generosity, decided to gift it to me, to help me achieve my first orgasm.

version of Womanizer (in Blue/Croc) I was gifted

It was bigger than I was expecting, a gaudy bedazzled gadget with a huge rhinestone button and a silicone spigot at the tip. Julie told me how to use it:

“I suggest lying in bed and putting the hole over your clit, then pressing the blue gem to turn it on. It should feel like getting head, but, like, the best head you’ve ever had in your life. If you’re with a guy, ask him to finger you while you use it and try it that way.”

I shared a dorm room with another girl, so I wasn’t able to use it in bed. I tried to use it in the shower, but it was awkward to do while standing up. It made a vibrating noise and agitated my clit instead of making it feel good, and I felt self-conscious that my roommate could hear the vibrations reverberating in the shower, so I turned it off. I would wait to use it with a guy, either Victor from Twitter or someone else.

When the day finally came where I would meet Victor in person for the first time, I was anxious, and already regretting my decision. We had each other’s numbers now and he had begun using heart emojis, and I had as well, without those feelings seemingly founded at all. I figured I would play along, because it was all I had.

I checked the social media apps to see if he had posted anything as I waited for him to arrive. He had posted an Instagram story, which did not surprise me, considering how obsessed he was with his “brand” and “making it.” It was a front-facing video of him talking to his imagined audience as he walked next to a chain link fence near I-5. 

“Hey guys, I’m somewhere in Orange County,” he said, “I have no idea where I am right now.” His voice faded out each time a car zoomed by. He flipped the camera around so we could see the concrete wasteland of Anaheim. I felt something like secondhand embarrassment, and pity, for making him come all the way out here to meet me. He claimed he was coming to Orange County anyway for a comedy show, but I assumed he would never had agreed to participate in the show unless he was staying with me.

“Can’t wait to shower in a woman’s clean bathroom,” he texted me just then. The thought of it made me shiver. But this was what I wanted, I reminded myself. This was my chance to live something more. 

“I think you should just take an Uber,” I texted him. He thought he could walk from the train station, and I didn’t have a car to pick him up. Eventually he did get an Uber and it dropped him off at the park adjacent to my apartment complex. I had already had two bars of Xanax, and the flush of serotonin in my brain made everything seem more dreamlike as I walked downstairs to meet him. Did we hug? I don’t remember.

There was no backing out now.

He entered my apartment bringing the smell of New York with him, his ice and the chains on his jeans jingling. He was blown away by the size of the apartment.

“This place is HUGE. I mean, so big. When I talk about Making It, this is the size of the apartment I’d like to have. Like, wow.”

I didn’t know what to say. I realize now it was a very nice apartment, with all new appliances and a kitchen island, but it was generic, devoid of personality, floored with that ugly grey laminate often found in modern “luxury housing.” At the time, though, it was just student housing to me—a room in a reclaimed luxury apartment complex bought by the school, paid for in tuition by loans and my parents.

I let him borrow a towel to shower then went back to the movie I was watching before he got there, Cold War by Paweł Pawlikowski. I knew Victor would find it pretentious. He had mentioned that [redacted] was more immersive and contemporary in its curriculum, and he considered himself well versed in modern cinema in terms of indies and big budgets—movies I considered nonentities. It made me appreciate the film history and theory classes I was required to take for my degree.

After his shower, he offered me a chocolate edible he bought from a dispensary in L.A. He was so excited about all the weed he could buy because it was technically still illegal in New York. I could feel the edible kicking in by the time he joined me on the couch to watch the film. In combination with the Xanax, I became extremely high very quickly, which made me act nervous and detached. I reached for the blanket and moved to the other side of the couch, away from him, wrapping myself in the blanket.

“Okay,” he said. “I see how it is.”

It took me a while to realize he was hurt that I didn’t want to cuddle with him.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just really high.” My body felt like pins and needles.

We watched the movie for a bit. The couple was having rough sex in the bathroom. I wondered if the movie made him horny, which wasn’t my intention. After a while he said, “I get it. It’s called Cold War because it’s about the Cold War, but the real Cold War is the one between them.”

That blew my mind. I said: “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re totally right.”

When the movie finished, I awkwardly moved towards his side of the couch, because I thought that was what he wanted me to do, not because I necessarily wanted to.

“Let’s just get this out of the way,” he said, wrapping his arms around me and leaning in for a toothy kiss. We started making out, and I knew what he wanted to do next, so I decided to expedite the process.

“Do you want to go to my room?”

I stood up and he followed me.

My bedroom, as was the rest of the apartment, was generic, with grey dorm room furniture and two twin sized beds. One of the beds, my bed, had no sheets or blankets on it, so he pushed me onto my roommate’s bed that was already made and began kissing me, taking my shirt off. He had already taken his pants off and was butt naked on the grey blanket. While he kissed my neck, I looked at the photograph of my bespectacled roommate and her boyfriend on the nightstand and felt guilty. I pushed myself off the bed.

“This isn’t my bed. Hold on.”

I ran out of the bedroom and quickly grabbed my blanket and sheets from the in-unit dryer. I re-entered the room and began to set the sheets on my bed.

“Are you really doing that right now?”

“Yes,” I said, laughing.

“How are you not insanely horny right now?”

“I don’t know, I guess girls can just turn it off.”

“Some girls, maybe.”

Once the sheets were down, he lay on them then said, “They’re wet!”

“Sorry!” I said. “Let me get a towel.”

I ran to the bathroom and came out with a blue towel. I placed it on the bed, and we resumed the action. He ate me out and it wasn’t very good; he used his teeth and had to lift my legs up.

“You taste so good,” he said. I smiled to myself. Then he asked me to do it back to him. “Can you kiss it?” he asked, and I did. When I began giving him a hand job, he stopped me shortly after and said, “Have you ever handled an uncircumcised penis before?” I said no and he told me they’re more sensitive so I don’t have to do it so roughly. “Have you ever been choked before?” he asked. I said no and he taught me how to do it, avoiding the major arteries so as not to actually make the person pass out. I tried it out on him, and he stopped me and said, “You’re enjoying that way too much.” I was. Then, while straddling him, he asked me how badly I wanted it. “Do you want it badly?” he said, and I said yes, softly, smiling to myself and looking away. “Do you really really want it?” he asked again, and I just said yes, I guess so. Then he suddenly grabbed my shoulders and said, “Then stop acting like you don’t want it. Stop acting like you didn’t DM me first.” His tone shook me up, made me afraid for a moment. Next thing I knew he was moving me around; he had the condom on. I was on my back, thinking this is the moment, this is how it should be, but only the purest, only the purest…he put the tip of his penis inside my vagina and it felt so foreign, so painful that I couldn’t help but start pouring out tears, and he only stopped trying to fuck me when he realized I was crying.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know you,” I sobbed. “I’ve never done this before. I’ve never met someone like this before.”

“What do you mean, not even on Tinder or anything? No one?”

I just shook my head, and the tears continued flowing. He was still hovering above, looking down at me.

“Well, you were the one that wanted to go to the bedroom,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.” After a pause I asked, “Did you go all the way in? Am I still a virgin?”

“Yeah I think you’re still a virgin. You were really tight, though.”

After a while I calmed down. We sat next to each other on my bed and I turned on my laptop. He showed me a short film he directed and acted in. In it, he plays a character in which it is insinuated that he was molested by another man after blacking out at a party. I asked him if that sort of thing actually happened in New York.

“Of course,” he said. “It’s New York, you have to watch your back. Never know who you’re dealing with.”

We looked at a few other films, then I closed the laptop.

“Do you want to try something else?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he said.

I put the computer away and pulled the blue bedazzled Womanizer out of my nightstand. I took my panties off and asked him to finger me while I used the toy, and he did. At first, it just felt like it was tickling my clit, but the higher I raised the power, the longer I left it on there, I found myself moaning in such ecstasy, not even aware I was doing it.

“You’ve really never felt this before, have you,” he asked.

I felt the heat fill up in my body and spread to my limbs and it kept building and building and building until I felt that expulsive release I never thought was possible for me to feel, and just let out a sigh. I turned the toy off.

“That’s it?” he asked. “You just nut and you’re done for the day? What about me?”

---

Victor and I stayed friends after this encounter. We had vaguely discussed creating a short film about our story, and I had even written a screenplay for it, but nothing ever came of it. I had secretly hoped it would never come to be. There was too much left unsaid that I never felt right about, like how much it affected me when his tone changed. I did not blame him nor hold any resentment towards him following the encounter—it simply did not work out. It happens.

I did go a little crazy in the months following, though. I think it had more to do with the orgasm I had, which had awakened something in me. I lost my preciousness towards sex, and was willing to do it with just about anyone after that.

Disappointed by what had happened with Victor, I was more determined than ever to lose my virginity in college, before I turned twenty-two. I was taking Xanax before going to house parties, drinking while barred out so I’d get wasted very quickly and with little effort. People liked me when I was drunk—up until I would black out and act a fool, which was occurring more and more frequently.

I was starting get friendly with people I’d known all throughout college but never really spoken to, and I found out three other girls I knew were virgins as well. So in a drunken frenzy I decided to start a group chat with the four of us. I called it “Virgins Anonymous.” Then, the next night, I lost my virginity to a guy that lived in the same university housing complex as me.

I lost touch with those girls, as often happens after college. My drinking had gotten out of hand, but really it was never just the alcohol that was the problem; it was the alcohol mixed with Xanax. Julie, the friend that gave me the Womanizer, and a few others, had staged a half-baked intervention by way of group text about my behavior at parties. I apologized, but really I just brushed them off, figured it wasn’t that serious if their intervention was over text message. I told myself they didn’t really care about me and were embarrassed to be associated with me. So I kept getting fucked up, just not around them.

I did a lot of bad, embarrassing things I don’t remember doing, because I was blacked out. I ruined friendships over Xanax, and destroyed the potential to make new ones.

Mixing Xanax, or any benzodiazepine, and alcohol, is a deadly combination. The amount of times I did it, I should be dead by now—and I had wanted to be dead. By some grace of God, I’m not.

I have no doubt if I were still living in California, I’d still be prescribed benzodiazepines. The truth is, I’m a very lazy person, and I don’t know how to buy drugs off the street. All my Xanax and, later, Ativan, was prescribed by my doctors, who thought I needed it. Even after a withdrawal related seizure landed me in the hospital, I was still taking benzos and mixing them with alcohol, merely because I had some left.

It was only when I moved to New York, a state with stricter regulations on benzo prescriptions, and my doctors here would not prescribe them to me despite my requests, that I stopped taking benzos entirely. I haven’t had a benzodiazepine since 2022.

I now work at a bookstore in Manhattan. My survival is subsidized by food stamps and state cash assistance. I should probably be striving for a higher paying job, but there is little motivation. I am nearly six figures in student loan debt. When I start making more money, I will have to start paying that back. I’d rather stay below the poverty line and pay zero dollars a month. But that is not sustainable.

I know the world is not going to end. They tried to tell us many times in the past that it would, and it never did. What we have now is all we will ever have, and most days there is little hope. But there is some.

It’s a miracle I met Aidan, my boyfriend, the love of my life. We hope to one day get married, we hope to one day have children, but those are not financial possibilities at the moment.

I am twenty-six years old. My sister is two years old than me and a doctor at prestigious university, but she too struggles with mental health issues, with finding meaning in the meaninglessness of our cultural reality. A culture that worships capital, that puts Barbie® on the cross to pray to instead of Jesus.

It doesn’t have to be Jesus. Just believe in something besides making money, for God’s sake.

Your job is not your life. Your life is not your job. You can have a job and write a book. You can have a job and paint, learn an instrument, do something. Be kind to your fellow human, and make friends. Find love. It’s all we have.

I consider myself fortunate to have found love, and I am determined not to let it slip away. The path to this point has been filled with challenges, testing our resilience and commitment. Achieving the stability that allows me to sit down and write again required overcoming numerous obstacles. Opening one's soul to another person is no easy feat, but the rewards are immeasurable. Embracing love is not a trite suggestion; it is a genuine invitation to let warmth into your heart. I don’t mean this in a facetious way. I'm not advocating for a dramatic experience like taking a heroic dose of acid for a spiritual awakening—such drug-induced psychoses are not substitutes for genuine emotional connection. There's no shortcut to self-actualization. However, I hope that, one day, you, the reader, will experience the profound beauty of opening your heart to another.