(This post originally appeared in HoneyColony’s Buzzworthy Blogs.)
In the summer after my first year of college, I was living it up, like many 19-year-olds do. I took an internship in Washington, D.C., where I could get lost in a maze of people and discover myself all at once. In those first few weeks, I made friends, navigated relationships, and even shared an almost magical moment with a 31-year-old painter who wooed me in a deep Spanish voice. It was a summer of whimsies—that is, until a flesh bacteria entered the picture.