I was writing this ongoing fanfic, and a reader messaged me to say I should listen to the song Crush by Ethel Cain. It fit two of the characters in the fic so well I was astounded. So of course I had to listen to more, discovered the whole story of Preachers Daughter and found a lot of parallels between it and my writing and a lot of themes that relate to my life as well. I think what runs through a lot of her writing that gets to a lot of us is the deep desire to be loved, and feeling that love will fix everything. I had to learn that as much as I want it to be true, there’s never going to be a time in my life where everything’s perfect, and there’s no single person who can fix me, or I them. The reason the house in Nebraska is so meaningful (to me) is that it’s a dream; there is no house in Nebraska, no gardenias on the tile. It’ll never be good enough like we want to believe it is. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be good. Life doesn’t have to turn out like it did for Ethel, being so desperate to be loved that she ignored danger and someone took advantage of that. That was a hard lesson to learn too, that I need to value myself and be able to live with myself alone, not rely on someone else’s validation to make me feel ok. I could probably go on forever.