Pāhonoa te oro

There is something existentially jarring about seeing yourself rendered that way through someone else’s eyes. You become suddenly, humiliatingly aware that you are simply another person in the world. Not the heroine of a rom-com, not the sum total of your intentions and tenderness, but a body and a history someone else may find embarrassing, inconvenient, or hard to love. Then I read the line I think I will probably remember to my grave: “I’m just not proud of her.” He repeated it with three