This year, for the very first time in my life, my friends and I did something that I've always imagined people do on December 31. On New Year's Eve, we sat around a table and each said what they wanted from the new year. I didn't yet know that, at least for me, the new year was going to do some taking before she did any giving. But, a table full of adults - genius, funny, smart, talented, loving, giving adults - largely admitted that we were unhappy with how we were choosing to spend our days.

There has been much talk, much debate, and much bitching back and forth about rape, rape culture, “rape” rape, etc. Are you tired of hearing about it yet? Because I am REALLY tired of having to talk about it. Clearly, it’s a good conversation to have, considering recent events – but, why, why, why has social conditioning put us in this position? Why do women feel that they have to take on the responsibility of not being raped?

This week something horrifying and terrifying and brutal happened. Not to me and not to anyone that I know. A friend of a friend; a friend of my sister. A woman, described by so many as a beautiful soul, perished in the middle of a dark road in the middle of the night. Alone and a block from her house. She was, as all evidence leads us to believe, struck by a car. This car was driven by an individual who may have been scared, may have been drunk - who knows - but without question this person did not have the capacity to give a damn about helping another fucking human being.