The year was 2010. Amazon.com was sixteen years old, pulling in $34 billion. Of that, $110.77 was mine. The haul? A $78 knockoff of the black diamond ring Mr. Big gave Carrie Bradshaw because she wasn’t like anyone else; a $5 phone case from my brief Android era; two rentals of teen vampire romances (Team Embarrassed, but mostly Team Edward); and Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred, which I did twice, maybe three times, between episodes of Weeds Season 5.

I was twenty-two and fancied myself not like anyone else. So did the ring. So did everyone wearing it.

Turns out, Jeff Bezos knows us better than we know ourselves.

I have the receipts. Sixteen and a half years of them, downloaded and gazed upon—impulses and abandoned ambitions; gifts wrapped for ghosts; self-help bought in the hollows of grief; gadgets and gizmos and clothes for versions of myself I swore would show up someday. A ledger of tender hopes and urgency, all logged, paid for, and shipped with a single click.

In 2011, Amazon grew 41% to $48 billion. My share? Silence. $0.

I was busy mailing love letters and fresh socks stuffed with mini bottles of Jack Daniel’s to Iraq. After he came home, I found a burner phone in the glove box. Nine girls’ numbers. I called them all. One voice told me I needed Jenny Craig.

I was busy getting divorced after that. Married at twenty, undone by twenty-two like everyone said it would be.

Somewhere in a drawer, that knockoff black diamond ring was tarnishing.

By 2012, Amazon hit $61 billion. My share? $453.18.

I bought my first vinyl LP—Mumford & Sons Sigh No More—giving modern life to the 1979 Kenwood turntable I’d rescued from my parents’ Goodwill box. As the needle dropped on that disc and others, I fell hard for a musician from Austin. He sang “Purple Rain” just like Prince, but when he played me “Holiday in Spain” on his guitar, I learned to love the longhorn skull above his bed. When our dalliance ended, I wished I could catch a plane to Barcelona.

Textbooks for my social work program trickled in alongside whatever novel I was losing myself in that week. A Denver Broncos lanyard kept me repping my home team under an unfamiliar sky.

Then came a splurge: a $271 white vanity set. I sat on its stool, applying makeup in the mirror, begging to be picked. A single bruised banana in a sea of bunches. That white vanity was a terrible thing. It showed every smudge.

In 2013, Amazon pulled in $74.5 billion. My share? $192.94.

That summer belonged to cookbooks: Cheap, Fast, Good. Betty Crocker’s Cooking Basics. Four Ingredients or Less. I was mostly back to takeout by Broncos season. It was a hell of a season. I sent for blue and orange everything— enough to rotate through to the Super Bowl where we lost by thirty-five. I laugh about it now. How much it seemed to matter then. A sixteen-pack of lightbulbs was delivered on December 31. The ones above my vanity weren’t going to change themselves.

By 2014, Amazon hit $89 billion. My share? $809.87.

I was an employed Social Worker now. Back home in Denver, I moved into a downtown condo with a view that made me feel tall. The place felt like a self I’d never met but always hoped to.

It filled up fast. My dog Sherman’s red nylon leash hung by the door, chew toys scattered across the floor. Tuffy’s Togo Toucan was our favorite. Three orders of Hanky Panky thongs in purple, black, and fuchsia filled a dresser drawer. A vibrator shipped in the same box as protein bars and Decision Cases for Advanced Social Work Practice: Confronting Complexity.

I sent a biography of Shel Silverstein—known not only for his poems but also for his womanizing and emotional unavailability—to the marijuana mogul who kept his wires dangling just enough to electrify me, never enough to ground me. A soulmate is a mirror, they say. He reflected every version of me I didn’t want to see. I should have known I was in deep the moment I ordered him New England Patriots shoes.

Downtown lights glowed through my windows. Pat Patriot smirked from my floor. Sherman slept at my feet.

In 2015, Amazon pulled in $107 billion. My share? $793.41.

I walked alongside those ugly Patriot shoes until the sidewalk ended. That’s where he left me—but not before he’d gotten my apples, branches, and most of my trunk. I bought How to Survive the Loss of a Love in April. Another copy in July after dropping it in the bathtub. The therapist I’d started seeing confused me with a client whose partner had died.

I didn’t correct him.

I had my IUD taken out. The one he’d asked me to get, the one I never really wanted but gladly implanted when I thought I was his. A DivaCup arrived to take its place.

I started a book club. Lolita. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. And Geek Love—holy shit. A story about parents who poisoned their children to make them special, just to keep them close.

A humidor in October. Then a guillotine cutter and sphere ice molds for bourbon. Five phone cases that year. A new skin every couple of months.

December brought another LP—Wilder Mind—the follow-up to Sigh No More. Mumford had gone electric.

So had I.

In 2016, Amazon pulled in $136 billion. My share? $442.36.

I gifted How to Survive the Loss of a Love to three different wreckages, hoping its wisdom held.

A bottle of Givenchy’s Hot Couture perfume arrived in July, alongside turquoise mascara and a new vibrator. A better one came by October.

In 2017, Amazon pulled in $177 billion. My share? $1,118.06.

I got a twelve-piece cookware set, enough to sauté any number of ingredients. Then a watering can in teal and copper. Carnivorous plant soil. Bonsai food.

Things were growing.

Wellness arrived in a steady stream. Biotin, retinol, organic deodorant. A pill organizer to manage it all. The year wrapped with seasonal candles galore, and herbal capsules to cure a lingering case of bacterial vaginosis.

In 2018, Amazon pulled in $232 billion. My share? $7,051.52.

The year’s first order: sea salt curl spray from Davines and a wedge pillow for the no-washing-hair, no-sleeping-flat aftermath of February’s open heart surgery. My second. For the first four weeks, I recovered alone.

And then I met him.

The year’s last order: Cadillac shoe stretch spray for the too-small but too-cheap-to-pass-up wedding shoes I found when I ventured into a department store.

I should have known I was in deep the moment I ordered a Green Bay Packers jersey and a foam cheesehead. Only this time, the cheese wasn’t going to rot.

Between our first date and our engagement: toothbrush heads in pairs, a grinder for his coffee, a tray for breakfasts in bed, Dead Sea mud for afternoon soaks in the tub. Thirtieth birthday decorations for my best friend’s office, and white sunglasses so bright I didn’t have to make eye contact with anyone in Vegas as I rang mine in. They made it an hour before we left for the airport.

And our first grocery order: chicken thighs, flank steak, salmon waiting to be cooked. A meat thermometer so we didn’t eat any of it raw.

In 2019, Amazon pulled in $280 billion. Our share? $3,666.71.

The groceries continued. Paleo condiments. More leeks than is probably normal. Nothing with toxins.

We married behind an old clock face on Groundhog Day. Prime Video streamed Bill Murray’s masterpiece on a loop above the dance floor. Custom ordered clocks for guest favors, all bearing the same line: “There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.” A cake topper of Punxsutawney and his bride.

Then came compression socks, travel packing cubes, and a water bottle that filtered. We honeymooned in Indonesia.

None of the bug spray worked.

Next, pet bowls and toys, but this time, instead of compostable poop bags, cat litter. We named her Maude. Recurring shipments of Dexcom patches and glucose monitors for the husband with an afflicted pancreas. And endless photography gear—white balance filters, tripods, lens hoods. I didn’t know how to use any of it.

But, oh, how I loved watching the sun rise with him behind his camera.

In 2020, Amazon pulled in $386 billion. Our share? $8,138.02.

The face coverings came first. N95s we later learned were fake. I had one real one from my job in healthcare, but only one. To keep it safe, put it in the oven, they said. And so I did.

Next came a balance ball desk chair, which Maude punctured, and an inflatable kayak, which Lake Tahoe punctured.

Then autoimmune cookbooks. A mandoline slicer. Bone broth by the carton. Coconut everything. Cassava when coconut got boring. The Hashimoto’s diagnosed during my divorce finally caught up. I lost enough hair to make ten wigs. Everything on my body that bent ached. Nothing was ever warm enough. And I wasn’t getting pregnant.

Your Complete Vegan Pregnancy came, hedging.

Instead, hobbies. Watercolor, paint brushes, puzzles, board games. A trombone for my trumpet player. Bose noise-cancelling headphones, to prevent mind-loss—and ovulation test strips, which induced it. In December, a sewing machine. Used only once to make a velvet pouch for the weed pipe.

On New Year’s Eve, while preparing myself a vegan approximation of Taco Bell’s Cheesey Gordita Crunch, I sliced off a chunk of thumb on the mandoline.

The tetanus shot burned.

In 2021, Amazon pulled in $469 billion. Our share? $7,981.80.

The year of the baby. Prenatal tea and supplements, all manner of maternity wear. A gift for my husband, a “Dad Est. 2021” mug, lost to the back of the cabinet before the baby even arrived. Three weeks pre-labor, furniture flooded the new house—every piece I’d picked, every piece I hated.

Our sweet baby boy was born at the end of summer. From the hospital, I ordered a peri bottle and perineal spray, nursing pads and postpartum underwear, pacifiers and nipple shields. All of which arrived before we did.

Breastfeeding did not go as planned—a tongue tie diagnosed too late. For four months, we tried, my tears falling on the top of his head as he tried to latch. Then, exclusive pumping. A special kind of failure.

A special kind of hell.

Replacement membranes, duckbill valves, bottles, milkmaid tea steeping at 3 a.m. Pump at six, eight, ten, twelve, two, four. Fill. Seal. Repeat. Eight times a day for eight months.

I still haven’t forgiven myself for not ordering formula. It was hard to tell what weighed more: the depression or the ninety extra pounds.

All I remember is pumping alone in the dark.

In 2022, Amazon pulled in $514 billion. Our share? $13,321.82.

Sippy cups in every conceivable material and color—silicone, stainless steel, glass. No matter which I offered, it was almost always the wrong one. Plates with sticky bottoms to hold dinners of four ingredients (or less).

Corner guards. Outlet plugs. Cabinet locks. Every edge bolted. Every socket plugged. Everything dangerous locked away.

None of it protected against time.

I switched from Davines to Innersense for my haircare, hoping it would help stop the balls of hair falling from my scalp. My son’s first word was ball.

How to Survive the Loss of a Love went to three more broken hearts. I picked mine back up after we said goodbye to Sherman. The day after he died, my son pointed to a die-cast model of a 1971 mail truck. I clicked. It came. Some things are simple enough.

In December, I bought Becoming a Coach: The Essential ICF Guide, believing credentials might quiet the guilt of leaving my son with strangers.

The guilt only grew alongside him.

In 2023, Amazon pulled in $574 billion. Our share? $20,707.55.

In theory, the year ran on a well-worn groove. Same supplement stack, same familiar rituals.

My curls still hadn’t returned.

The expensive Dyson mop-vacuum somehow never made the floor clean.

A second cat, Harold—an orange tabby—entered in July. My husband asked why. I couldn’t say. Not then. Not really. Something had to fill the hole left by the second baby my cardiac history wouldn’t let me have. My son fell in instant love with the little fluff ball—until Harold fell off the side of his bath and into the water, clawing deep, long scratches.

It didn’t leave any scars we can see.

I built a small library that year.  The Rage Journal. The Postnatal Depletion Cure. How to Not Hate Your Husband After Kids. I still did, for a while. We tried to untangle inherited patterns. Tried to make sense of wounds we couldn’t name. Every week something new joined the collection of things we meant to learn.

A tarot card reader at a fancy mansion’s high tea told me I was a very powerful witch. An 88-piece Witchcraft Spell Kit and a money-drawing candle arrived within days. I lit the candle and waited.

Wax pooled in the tray.

In 2024, Amazon pulled in $638 billion. Our share? $13,364.31.

The groceries kept coming. Every week, the same Whole Foods order. Hearts of Palm. Nothing with gluten. No added sugar. June brought the adrenal stack for mornings I was exhausted before even waking up. I stopped watching football.

A guitar strap in August. A capo. A toy trumpet in October. Instruments accumulating. Songs unwritten. Books for our son. Yes! No!: A First Conversation About Consent. Teaching him the words for his body before anyone could give him the wrong ones. Books for me, too. No Bad Parts. Boundary Boss. When the Body Says No.

I tried to believe all my parts were good.

In 2025, Amazon pulled in $717 billion. Our share? $18,880.74. 

The Whole Foods orders had become liturgy. Same cart. The leeks remained loyal.

February brought a vulva balm for my dry vagina. More furniture, too. A bed frame, a porch swing. a neon sign quoting The Dude. Decorating again. This time, I loved it all.

One night at bedtime, my son asked what it means to die. Then he asked about guns. By morning, five books had hit the front porch.

Terrarium substrate, leaf litter and a heat mat arrived in August in time for my son’s birthday gift. A Giant African Millipede. He watched in awe as she glided through her world, legs like a slow ocean. Trusty orange tabby warm against his leg.

May brought my husband a Godox AD600 Pro II strobe. A flash trigger. A 5-in-1 reflector. By July, a black-and-white backdrop kit and a softbox. By September, more. A basement portrait studio.

He hasn’t taken a photo of the sunrise in years. He still wakes before me. I hear him in the kitchen, grinding coffee in the dark.

The cats. My husband. The millipede and all but one of her legs. Our kiddo. Me. Bonded by nothing that can be returned.

I haven’t looked at my 2026 purchase history but Amazon calculated my lifetime total anyway. Sixteen years. 1,911 orders. Eight home addresses. $104,439.51.

What have I learned?

None of the foot relief creams work as advertised.