Make Me Feel Good: Sex, Sorrow, and the Will to Live

The Neuropsychology of Erotic Grief

I have no monumental memories I’d associate with bliss. Happiness, to me, has always felt fleeting—an interlude, not a resting place. My life has been earmarked by devastation, punctuated by sliding-doors moments of sorrow. The boy I liked throwing rocks at my head in first grade. Being locked in a closet at my own sixth-grade birthday party. My first, second, and third heartbreaks. Being doxxed by my best friend’s boyfriend. Smoking crack in a Motel 6 before being abandoned roadside by a con man client. The tragic death of four of my friends in a high school car accident.