Back scratching trains: Nostalgia, let's go!
(Originally posted via Substack on September 15, 2025)
It's my first post on Split Ends.
Here I sit, practicing the self-regulation exercises taught to me yesterday by my therapist. To cope with the obsessive compulsive perfectionism that insists I never, ever click ‘send,’ I slowly turn my head. This shows my nervous system that no one is chasing me (reading over my shoulder). To you, reading on the other side of the screen, this is not a plea for gentleness. Okay, yes it is.
So, what’s Split Ends? It’s a space for a writing process that’s budding and seeking friends who also desperately need art during extra authoritarian times. I call it Split Ends, because I’m intrigued by what societies tell women and girls to cut off. Because if my girlhood had a texture, it’d be the moment I learned about split ends during story time in fourth grade.
A girl nudged me and pointed to a fraying strand of hair on another girl’s head. We had all formed a train to scratch each other’s backs. (Don’t worry, the person in the front of the train would periodically switch with the person in the back. We were nine, and we were fair.) I immediately scanned the ends of my hair for any bits that dared to separate.
Anyway, I’m currently working on two projects:
1. Something new - Writing a psychological thriller about fundamentalism and escape.
Thus far, the project tugs at many threads in the patchwork of cultic behavior, religious trauma, and bulked-out patriarchy. I’m not sure which ones I’ll follow or how they’ll unravel. Subscribe if you’re curious. I’ll take you with me.
Context:
I’ve been thinking about #TradWives and the community of Mormon women and girls that raised me throughout the 90s and 2000s. I feel an eerie intimacy and estrangement with the phenomenon. I know that if I wipe my hand against its surface, the polish will smear. But I’m afraid to touch it.
Little Mormon me, roughly 1997
Still, the discourse around #TradWives and my lived experience compels me to explore what I may contribute, specifically through fiction. I’m curious with questions like: Did these Mormon women and girls actually pass on the know-how for community care I need to resist fascism? Can a trend, an algorithm hold such contradictions, or only sell orthodoxy and protein powder?
I know that if I wipe my hand against its surface, the polish will smear. But I’m afraid to touch it.
2. Something old - Self-publishing my chapbook, Hold On
Context:
I wrote an early version of this for my creative writing thesis in college 12 years ago. Somewhere between prose and poetry unfolds Hold On—angsty vignettes on the memories and relationships of a teenage girl in early-2000s Florida. And yep, it gets gay.
Hold On is nostalgic (not for an imagined, static past, but for the rush of Adrenalin when you’re young and everything around and in you is changing). So, in reminiscence of old trailers that teased the first several minutes of the movie, here is the beginning of the first vignette. Stay tuned for the launch.
"
The lawn cradles me as I tear grass between my fingers. Amaya wants to dance. I want to lie where we are. I’m an evening thunderstorm, laughing stronger than I have all day. Her backyard reminds me of the Fakahatchee. The tall grass tinted yellow by the spinning stars reminds me of waiting on Alligator Alley past sundown. Mom, C.J., and I drove down the road in our station wagon. We didn’t pass many cars, but when we did, Mom made fun of the tourists. Yet, she was the one who stopped when a gator crawled onto the road. It bit both tires on the right side of the car. We were stuck for five hours before patrol came. It’s either remembering or the rum that turns my stomach as I stand up. I stumble three steps until my hands grip my knees and my feet find the ground.
"Let’s go," I say..