Aching with longing and desire

Welcome to From the Mind of Karis, the monthly update & essay newsletter from author, freelance editor, and podcaster Karis Rogerson. It’s lovely to have you! You may want to read read this in your browser for best results, but follow your peace and read it in your inbox if you prefer! <3

Hello my loves 😍 

It’s a hard world we live in. It’s been four weeks since I sent a regular letter like this, and the horrors have been unending. There have been think pieces and smart reporting and calls to action from people far more well-spoken and informed than I. I will point you toward an independent journalist I follow, Ken Klippenstein, whose breaking-news reporting on this administration has been so helpful.

Today the thing on my heart is this: it is Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025, and Israel has intercepted or been assumed to intercept all 43 vessels that made up the Golbal Sumud Flotilla. Palestinians in Gaza were forced to witness hope sail close before it was snatched away. These are people who are being starved, intentionally, with a cruelty that shatters the illusion of human goodness, for the crime of — what? Being born in a land that others wanted? Being born brown? Being born?

They are like us — like you and I: they are people with dreams, loves, aspirations, hopes, heartbreaks. They deserve to have everything that I have and more. They deserve to sleep in soft beds on silent streets, not in tents under bomb-screaming skies. They deserve to eat rich foods and feel so full they might puke, not watch their own and their children’s bellies distend with hunger before collapsing inwards. They deserve to LIVE — as fully and bountifully as you do, as I do.

And the humanitarian aid being sent to them has been intercepted. Again.

I am enraged. I am horrified. I am broken. And I am writing about it, because I don’t know what else to do. Because it’s the least I can do.

I don’t have a smooth transition into the rest of the newsletter. Let’s just hold hands and go.

From the heart 💗

I am full of longing. It thrums inside my heart and soars through my veins, choking my airways and fogging my brain. I ache with it, this desire, this craving, this need. It rustles its wings inside of me and takes flight with my imagination.

It’s uncomfortable and unsettling at times. It doesn’t feel like something I should be feeling — like maybe I ought to tamp it down and shove it away, try to drown it out or bottle it up until it’s not a problem anymore, at least for a moment or two.

I’m talking about my longing for romantic love, of course.

It stalks me night and day, infiltrating my dreams so I wake up unsettled and hopeful and then dogging my steps all through the waking hours. And because this longing comes tinged with the absence of said love, I spend a lot of time wondering what’s wrong with me; what exactly is it about me that is so wrong that I can’t find this love that I crave?

Sometimes this longing takes a different tinge, moving from a longing for love to a more uncomfortable iteration: desire.¹  

I don’t know how to sit with these feelings. They make me feel antsy and itchy, like there’s adrenaline coursing through my veins and I can’t figure out where to put all the extra energy.

I’ve spent a long time feeling ashamed of the longing and the desire — for different reasons, sure, but the end result is the same. The end result is that I twist myself into a pretzel shape to try to pretend that I don’t feel this way.

No, your honor, I don’t spend long moments every day wishing someone loved me with a fierceness and intensity that should scare but instead thrills me.

No, your honor, I don’t burn with desire.

No, your honor…

In the absence of the love I crave, I’ve tried to come up with explanations. It’s because I’m ugly; it’s because I’m fat; it’s because my laugh is too loud; it’s because I’m too depressed — who could love so much darkness?

In my youth, that is in high school and college, I often felt like I was trapped inside a cage made of my own flesh and blood. Inside, I was vibrant and alive; on the outside, though, my face was impassive and my eyes downcast. I could tell that the way I presented when out of my comfort zone was off-putting, and I didn’t know how to explain — I want to be here, I want to participate, I want to know you, but I am so scared you won’t love the way I show up.

I can’t even tell you how many breakdowns were spurred on because of this dichotomy; and because I thought, maybe, just maybe, if they knew how broken my mind was, they would understand me.

Maybe, if they pitied me, if they looked upon me with compassion, they would eventually love me the way I wanted to be loved.²

I still want to be loved like that, but thankfully I’m more comfortable in my own skin these days.

Until I start to wonder what it is about me, exactly, that is so anathema to being loved and desired.

I don’t have an answer. I don’t have a point to writing this. I just have this longing, this unsettled feeling in my spirit, moth wings flutter against my ribcage, and I know I need to share these words or I might implode.

Here you go, friends. The words that beg to escape me. I hope you can hold them with care.

From the shelf 📚

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil ³ by V.E. Schwab — this book is a masterclass in everything from gorgeous, lyrical prose to writing the most toxic tangled lesbian love stories. There are three vampires whose lives intersect across the centuries in stunning and tragic ways. This book is more than 500 pages of hunger, angst, and desire. It’s gorgeous and thrums with energy and life. I cannot recommend it enough!

Lost and Lassoed by Lyla Sage — Teddy and Gus are my FAVES. This is the third book in Lyla Sage’s debut Rebel Blue Ranch series, and reading it felt like coming home. Which makes no sense because I’m a city girl who was raised in Italy; my connection to the American West, especially ranches in Wyoming, is like…nonexistent. The book is romantic and sexy and sweet to boot; everything I could’ve wanted!

All Superheroes Need PR by Elizabeth Stephens — um, I didn’t realize I was here for the aliens but I am HERE for the aliens. This book is so delightfully wacky, with a super possessive, obsessed alien dude and the traumatized human woman — who’s a brilliant PR strategist — he falls in love with. I’m so intrigued by the twist at the end and what that means for future books in this series, too!

Matched by Becca Steele — the final book in a Kindle Unlimited series that’s absolutely taken over my life this year! These are new adult m/m romances that are high-heat and pure delight. In this one, Nate and Charlie are just two straight guys who get accidentally matched on a student dating app. Oops! Except then they fall in love (not so straight after all, ey!) and so it all works out in the end. I loved this book. So much. My boys!

Vampires Never Get Old, ed. Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker — this YA anthology is built around vampire stories from some exciting, incredible voices in the world of young adult literature. I really loved the variety of stories and vampire myths that were collected here, and I’m so excited to dive next into the other books in this series!

A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian — Cat Sebastian, light of my life. This historical m/m romance follows Hartley, a white man who’s been cast out of society because it came to light that his godfather abused him sexually and that’s how he got his inheritance, and Sam, a Black ex-fighter who runs a bar (taproom? tavern?). Oh, wow. This book is tender. This book is sweet. This book is about found family and unlearning the things that keep us alone and holy forking shirtballs, my dudes, did I love it so very much!

From the page ✍️ 

This one goes out to all the friends who have tried to impress this fact upon me for the past few years! My loves, I’m here today to share that I’m attempting to turn over a new leaf when it comes to how I view — and importantly, talk about — myself.

Long story short, if you know me well you know how self-deprecating I am. Sometimes, like maybe 3% of the time, this is a joke. The rest of the time, though, I’m being sincere when I talk shit about myself. I’m especially egregious about this when it comes to my writing — my craft, my achievements, and my future prospects.

I think I started doing this self-deprecation as a bit of a protective instinct. You see, I take rejection really really freaking hard. So I thought, way back in the day when I was young(er) and freshly into getting said rejections, that if I just…didn’t think I deserved good news, it wouldn’t hurt so much when I got bad news!⁴

Over the years, my self-deprecation sank into my soul until it wasn’t just a belief, it was my only belief about myself. For years I’ve lived with a split mind — deeply ambitious and hungry for success on the one hand; completely certain that I don’t deserve and will never achieve anything good on the other hand. It’s been awful. I’ve felt like I was going insane, trying to juggle these two parts of my thinking, and I’ve been miserable, wanting something so desperately that I was absolutely convinced would never come to me.

Recently, I’ve realized that I’m maybe making other people miserable, too. Or at least…contributing misery where I want to contribute nothing but joy and happiness.

The phrase that’s come to me is this: self-acceptance is community care.

It extends beyond the world of publishing or careers, and it’s something I’ve learned as I navigated the Gofundme and subsequent ketamine treatments this summer; the realization that people love me, and that disbelieving or dismissing that love is hurting the very people I never want to hurt.

But this is the writing section of the newsletter, LOL, so I’ll tie it back to writing. The thing is, publishing is a community made up of people. Sure, there are corporations that run things and it’s a business and capitalism is our fucking taskmaster, but when you boil things down, publishing would be nothing without the individuals who put their work and hearts into every book. Authors, agents, editors, readers — we’re all in community with each other.

Which means that one person’s actions affect others. One person’s beliefs affect others.

This next piece is hard to get out, but I’m gritting my teeth and clenching my jaw and hissing it anyway: the truth is, in this community, I have achieved things and currently sit in a position of success compared to some others. That is: I have an MFA; I have signed with an agent; I am a mentor for various communities; I have a craft podcast; I am, whether I like it or not…someone that (some people at least) listen to.

Ugh I hated writing that.

But it’s important to acknowledge, because I can no longer sit down and say that I’m untalented, unsuccessful, a hack, because I have things on paper that seem to disprove that. And if anyone is following me who doesn’t yet have those things, I mean, what is the message that I’m sending with these words?

Not the message I ever meant to send, that’s for sure.

God, I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin and I have the immense urge to add in all caps something taking back everything I said up above. It feels so distinctly wrong to exalt myself or pat myself on the back of approve of myself…

But.

But I’m going to try. I hope it doesn’t drive you all batty, LOL.

Alla prossima 👋

There’s a new episode of The Write Way of Life available!

I hope y’all are keeping well. Stay safe, keep each other safe, and remember that I love you!

XOXO,

1  I’m talking about the physical desire, y’all. Like, I’d say “lust” if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve spent so many years in a repressed sort of shame spiral that I don’t know how to access lust itself, but you know what, maybe that’s a topic for a different newsletter…

2  Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and give my younger self a hug…

3  Book hyperlinks that go to Bookshop.org affiliate links mean that, should you purchase a book through it, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you!

4  Yeah, that…wasn’t the case then. Isn’t the case now. Won’t be the case in the future…