I’ve been trying to find time in my day to “just breathe.” That’s what everyone tells me to do when I’m feeling sad: “just breathe.” But no one tells you how to breathe when everything feels like it’s caving in, when your brain is just static noise and your heart’s doing Olympic flips over your to-do list.
This semester, I’ve officially leveled up to “crash-out,” a term I’ve lovingly assigned myself for when I combust mid-week and spiral into a pit of Celsius-fueled dread. Between the relentless gray skies and classes that feel like psychological warfare (I’m looking at you, chemistry), I’ve been struggling to keep my head above water.
I turned 19 last week, and that alone sent me into a deeper crash-out than any exam ever could. It’s such a strange age, not new like 18 or indulgently mature like 21. It’s a limbo where I am supposed to have my life figured out, but, honestly, it just feels like being lost all over again — except with better skin care.
So when one of my best friends texted me — “they r giving out free hardcover books outside barnes n noble!” — it felt like the universe had finally thrown me a bone. I was mid-rot, aggressively ignoring my upcoming chemistry midterm and the terror of being 19, when, suddenly, I was sprinting to the JHMI bus stop with the kind of energy usually reserved for finals week panic. Too long had it been since I descended into my last rabbit hole; too long had it been since I found myself lost in a world that wasn’t dictated by derivatives or Greek letters.
As I made it to the stop and reached for the first book I saw, something immediately felt off. The volunteers were too nice. The books looked too new. And the stories themselves? Imagine if Franz Kafka tried to ghostwrite Fifty Shades of Grey in a cult compound. Turns out, the books were from TooFar Media — the fever-dream publishing arm of one Rich Shapero, who (according to my frantic Googling) is a venture capitalist who writes novels? And music? And multimedia, hallucinogenic experiences? I left with a stack of them.
Books have always been my safe place. I’ve loved reading ever since I was able to get my hands on a Junie B. Jones paperback and pretend that I was smarter than my classmates. I was that kid who hid a little flashlight under my pillow and took it out when my parents thought that I was asleep (though they definitely knew I wasn’t). Stories were the one place where things made sense. Actions had consequences, arcs had closure and people either got what they deserved or learned something new along the way. I wanted to escape from reality but also challenge myself to see the world through a new pair of eyes.
So imagine my horror when I opened The Hornet’s Spell and was met with, “Directly below, a pair of women are holding their breasts, teasing a man hunched like an ape.”
These stories are disappointments to the very idea of speculative fiction. There’s no clarity, no coherence, just a haze of words that make no sense but try desperately to sound profound (or maybe it’s just me projecting in my writing; after all, this whole article is just me trying to sound profound). With characters so bizarre they felt AI-generated and an ungodly amount of metaphors, it felt like being smothered by a Writing Seminars major’s fever dream.
That night, instead of studying for chemistry like a responsible student, I spiraled into a full-blown investigation. I read excerpts, scrolled Reddit threads and watched YouTube video essays like “Rin, Tongue, & Dorner | Why Rich Shapero is a Horrible Author.” As I stared at my ceiling with my snoozing roommate beside me, I asked myself: Why am I here?
Not in the spiritual sense. I meant, Why am I in college when I could be in Big Sur reading erotic, cult fiction under the moonlight with a bunch of failed screenwriters?
At that moment, as absurd as it sounds, something clicked. I realized I’d been living passively, reacting to things instead of directing them. I’d let my schedule — and my stress — define me. But, if Rich Shapero can spend his millions publishing psychedelic novels with names like Rin, Tongue and Dorner, maybe I can afford to think differently about what I want out of life. Honestly, it’s kind of hilarious.
I found myself laughing at the sheer absurdity. Not just at the books, but at myself and my state of existential panic, at how quickly I’d dropped everything to chase the high of a free novel, at how I was considering renouncing academia for a life of questionable literature and forest communes.
I’ve always had this fear that, if I stop being productive, I’ll stop being valuable. But maybe it’s okay to fall down rabbit holes sometimes. Maybe “wasting” time isn’t always a waste if it brings you back to yourself (even if that self is clutching a copy of a TooFar Media book and questioning every literary instinct you’ve ever had).
These weird, smutty, cultish books didn’t give me answers. But they gave me something even better: perspective. A moment to sit back and laugh. To remember that life is confusing and a little horrifying but also profoundly funny if you let it be.
I’m still figuring it all out. I still crash out, still let my thoughts spiral until I’m certain I’m going to drop out of college, run away and join a commune in Oregon. But now, I try to find small moments to laugh. To breathe. To read even if the book is bad (especially if the book is bad). Turning 19 has made me realize that I can’t keep “crashing out” forever. I can’t keep using stress and sadness as excuses to stay in bed all day or to avoid conversations with myself about what I want, who I am and what the fuck I’m doing here.
Maybe the point isn’t to always be enlightened or productive or perfect. Maybe the point is to get a little lost. To read something terrible. To cry and then laugh and then say, Okay, let’s try again tomorrow.
And if that’s not what turning 19 is about, then I don’t know what is.
Kaylee Nguyen is a freshman from Pensacola, Fla., studying Molecular and Cellular Biology and Writing Seminars. Her column tackles how creativity connects with identity as she hopes to connect with others through shared experiences and the universal love for learning.
