Megan Greenwell

I even believe we might usefully return to some of our own stories more than once. I believe in multiplicity, and I believe in urgency; I believe we tell our stories when we need to tell them, and that raw grief, raw bliss, raw aftermath, have their own stories to tell. Wallace Stevens called a poem “the cry of its occasion,” and I think we can’t always set the timeline on our cries. We utter them when they come.

You will likely never anticipate the things that tear you apart. There may be no limits to the depths of someone’s love but instead walls that surround it, channeling it but not letting it expand and explore. Sometimes that someone is just as much you as the other person, even if for a long time you think it isn’t. We all fail. Even someone who loves you to the outer limits of his soul can fail. So can you.

But reading through the trial testimony and court documents, it is impossible not to see a crummy culture, if not an overtly sexist one. And the problem is that sexism today very often is not overt. It’s subtle, and that makes it all the more difficult to identify and root out. It’s not your boss hitting on you and then demoting you to secretary when you spurn his advances. It’s your boss describing your assertiveness as too assertive, and suggesting you might be better suited for an operational role. It’s not your being asked to fix the coffees at a client meeting. It’s Cocktail Party Guy forcing you to return the conversation to business, so you have an opportunity to develop him as a source rather than talking about dogs for 20 minutes. It is pervasive. It is persistent. And it is so, so exhausting, all those subtle hints that you are a little different and that your behavior is being interpreted a little differently.

The award belongs to him because I would not be a journalist were it not for him. The award belongs to him because I would not be at The Atlantic if not for him. The award belongs to him because he urged me on for nearly my entire adult life—faster, stronger, higher—and his memory will urge me on for the rest of my natural life.

As if, as if, it is all ifs; we are at much unease.

My days are fairly routine. Wake up. Double espresso. Read about struggle and strife in Le Monde. Ponder what it means to be human. You could call me a creature of habit.

A cadaver didn't save Carson's career, that was Julie, a person called Julie.

5. I've never had a big break. I've just had tiny cracks in this wall of indifference until finally the wall wasn't there any more