Don’t expect the conversation with your friend to extinguish your anxiety; your anxiety won’t go that easy. It’s braided and baked into you, part of your dough. She won’t have any magic words to change that. Honesty doesn’t trump anxiety. What it does often do is reduce it down to proper proportions, make it a more manageable size.

Sometimes I am going to cross post entries from my Tumblr. This is one such occasion. The thing about the Midwest is that is is a place millions of people call home. The Midwest is not a punch line for smug jokes about backwards places. I was born in Nebraska. I have lived most of my life in the Midwest. I have spent the past eleven years living in rural America. I have been largely…