Over the holiday weekend, my 18-year-old niece (think my doppelganger with a brain) and I decided to drive up to the Catskills for a long-overdue one-on-one with nature. Trudging along one of the trails, accompanied by nothing more than fresh air and a palpable sense of Fourth of July spirit, we started talking about the meaning of personal independence.

“You shouldn’t need to be with somebody to be happy,” I preached, attempting to wipe out any remnants of rite-of-passage Russian family brainwashing that encourages one to settle down at earliest convenience.

“Yes, but it’s so nice to be with someone.” was the response of a teen who had recently gotten her first taste of true romance. I had been there myself and didn’t want to argue, and so I didn’t.

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I recently renamed my group chat The Stepford Diaries. Then I almost exited it altogether. Call me immature, but the prospect of listening to endless debates on the most lightweight stroller on the Bugaboo market made me want to inflict physical pain upon myself in a not-so-lightweight way.

Please keep in mind that, a mere decade ago, the members of my group chat were passing around a tiered, backless Alice & Olivia dress to slut it up at 1 Oak. And negotiating their way into Bungalow 8 to do illegal narcotics next to B-list celebrities. And driving to the Hamptons for one night to cuddle in random beds with Veuve Clicquot magnums (and strangers.) Today, these same women are passing around quinoa puree recipes and cuddling in bed with their multi-member households.

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I’m standing in the snack isle at Whole Foods, starting at what seems like endless rows of granola bars. There’s a Chia bar, it has coconut in it.. I like coconut, but it’s kind of small. There’s a giant Clif bar that seems like it would fill me up, but look at that sugar count! The Think Thin bar seems ok, but do I really want to be the girl who “thinks thin”? Luna bar? Too basic, I can do better.. This excruciating mental process continues for ten minutes until I throw in the flag and leave the store empty-handed. Twenty minutes later, I’m starving.

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One, two, three, four. These are the guys I have messaging me at the moment. One is a long-term friend with occasional six-whiskey-deep-when-the-full-moon-strikes-benefits. Two is cool, but is currently far away in Moscow, providing daydream material for daydreams of a Great Escape. Three and four, who are more unsaved numbers in my phone than actual identifiable human beings, are guys I’m not really interested in, but text back and forth with, just because.

Just because what? Just because I enjoy texting random half-strangers updates about my day? Not really. Just because I think that, one day, some miracle will happen and will make me view them in a new light? Most likely not. While no shrink has been consulted on this grave issue, I have a secret suspicion that the real reason I may be keeping this mini Raya army around is because I’m nurturing some underlying insecurity with constant male attention.

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As we step into the booze-fueled debachery that are the Holidays, I’m tempted to write you a cheesy post about being happy solo, wearing glittery Dries while hooking up with random strangers, cuffing it up with your tennis instructor, and generally having all the fun a human being can while consuming their weight in spiced eggnog. Except, you’ve heard it all before. And so, I propose that we take it one step further and start focusing on what is more beneficial to us in the long run:

Making space.

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When it comes to the land where K is the only letter of the alphabet, I have a very firm stance: ignore and pray that it goes away.

The only problem is, it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime in the foreseeable future. In fact, the Kardashian clusterfuck seems to be growing at expedited speed, as though pumped with the same chemicals as its members’ individual body parts. Everywhere you turn, a new KK Klone is talking about her latest divorce, minor health issue, or other strenuous ordeal that was written into her life by the masterminds that are the show’s scriptwriters. I get the brilliant businesswomen part, the fact that their net worth may be higher than the government budget of Malawi, and that their Momager is probably going to be next to nominate herself as governor of California or VP of America. (The worst part is that this may actually work.) Nonetheless, I find these people to be the direct projection of the overall mass stupidity of this county and fail to see anything positive in their existence.

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