Fallon's Personal Essays

  The world isn’t black and white. Listen. Be kind to yourself. It’s okay to mess up. Just keep going.  These phrases bring me hope. I often whisper them to myself, or speak them in my brain, in order to keep up with the demands of the world. To finish that assignment, that cross country race, keep moving forward in a show after I’ve missed a cue.  They’re intentional thoughts that I desperately want to believe. However, implanting thoughts into my brain is difficult.  I love these sort of vague mantras because I can constantly connect them with situations. There are wonderful moments when I hear that advice with new ears. It sort of clicks, and I see how this general rule can apply to many facets of my life. There’s a physical sensation. The inside of my skull is stretching, gently expanding, as I feel pieces click into a new configuration. It’s difficult to describe-- I’ve never heard anyone describe physical sensations of epiphany.  As important and encompass...

  I believe every object I’ve ever owned, even touched, contributes in some minute way to the story of my life.  Of course, I can’t name every object I’ve ever interacted with in 650 words, even if I could remember them all. And I certainly can’t delve into how each of them might have shaped an almost imperceptible facet of my self, leading to incomprehensible texture in my life. But I can talk about my bedroom walls. They’re atrocious, plastered with the sentimental things that lived on my floor until I finally had the energy to clean it off. Things that I couldn’t find any better use for, but couldn’t quite bring myself to throw away. And now they sit there, almost like memories in a brain.  I’m so used to the presence of these photographs, posters, scraps of artwork, and even old projects, that they usually mean nothing. They’re just noise. But every so often, I’ll look at one just right and be transported back to the moment when I acquired it, remembering a ho...

  In my second grade class, I like liked a boy. His name was (REDACTED).  Actually, because he’s a real person who likely still lives in the same town, and I don’t want you telling him about this, and just generally want to spare him embarrassment, you don’t get his real name. Let’s just call him… Bryce.  I want to address the phrase “like liked, ” as I believe it can help define how my perception of crushes has evolved over the years. In second grade, I was very open about using the word “crush,” and did, in fact, use that word in my eventual botched confession to… Bryce. However, by middle school, I refused to admit to any romantic feelings of any sort. Even my closest friends did not hear of my first “real crush” (based on a definition I picked up in 6th grade puberty class) until nearly two years after I recognized it as such. As I’m reflecting on this now, my first toe-dip into the pool of very young love might have been a leading contributor to my future crippling s...