My Secret Life as The World's Worst Professional Matchmaker

I don't know how I landed this job. But the most surprising part is that instead of helping my clients find love, they helped me get out of an abusive relationship.

Illustrations by Alice Yu Deng | Story edited by Genelle Levy

“The bruise is shaped like a penis, Karie.”

Joy laughed to herself and shook her head. It wasn’t the sort of laugh you laugh back at, though. It was the kind of laugh meant to hold back tears. She took a deep breath and scrunched her face in a familiar way, a way I’d scrunched my own face before, a way that says, “No! I will not let myself be a fucking mess right now!” Joy, whose name, like those of the other clients mentioned in this piece, has been changed to protect her privacy, had been single for years, too afraid to date again. By the time she found herself in the chair opposite me, she was in her late 30s and had become a self-proclaimed cat lady. She told me about how, a week before, on a Friday night, while her co-workers were out on dates they’d found on eHarmony or Match.com, she’d been masturbating in the shower again. Her eyes were closed, and she was really starting to get into it, when her cat snuck behind the …