Stories
You’re not the only one
We wrote these from experiences people often describe. They’re composites: no real person is named or quoted. Reading one can make your own easier to write.
There's a senior colleague who cuts me off almost every time I speak in meetings. Not rudely — smoothly, like a lane change.
I found out my team has a second group chat when someone laughed at a joke that was never said out loud. They plan lunches in there.
Every family dinner has a scorecard, and I'm always losing. An older relative — the one everyone defers to — has a way of asking about my life that is really an announcement about someone else's.
This is the first time this has existed outside my head. Growing up, an older sibling had a nickname for me that the whole house eventually adopted.
I went back to school at forty — an evening class, twice a week, something I'd wanted for years. There's a small group that sits together, younger, quick, fluent in all of it.
Someone in a group chat I'd been in for years posted a screenshot of something I wrote, cropped so it read completely differently, with a caption making fun of it. The replies came fast — jokes, reaction images, people I'd met, people I hadn't.
An account with a much bigger following than mine quote-posted something I made, calling it embarrassing. That was months ago.
I watched it happen to my closest friend. We were out with the wider group and one of them started in on her — the tone that's technically a joke, aimed at the same soft spot every time.