I am a peaceable person. By that I mean I avoid conflict and also I’m quite lazy. People generally appeal to me. I can see their good side. I sometimes have fleeting antagonisms: toward a waitress I feel is being too performative in her friendship with a coffee shop regular, or that woman on the subway eating a plum really loudly. But in general, I have a smiley face and at the risk of sounding bonkers, I make friends with almost everyone I come across. What I’m missing, I’ve come to realize after a summer of cookouts and heart-to-hearts and hiking trips, is an enemy.

Until I secure a worthwhile enemy, I cannot consider myself a successful grown-up. It’s sobering to consider why it hasn’t happened yet. Am I not important enough? Am I not fierce enough?

Every heroine must have an opponent who makes her better, stronger, nimbler than before. Who shall propel me forward on waves of bitter animosity? Crucially, I live in a chaotic time where people like me, people who usually bumble along unbothered, have to step up and stand for something. It’s not a hardening of the heart so much as a sharpening of the spirit.

So recently I closed my eyes and looked around on a deep level for who’s bothering me. All my life I’ve been mystified by and envious of people with a clear sense of purpose combined with an undeserved sense of confidence. Then I have pet hates — ones that have bloomed so abundant in this country of late, namely racism, the demonizing of immigrants, and white people lashing out at progress because they somehow feel victimized by it. Out of this checklist, a phantasm emerged, and as it took shape I saw it was none other than Stephen Miller, waving at me cheerfully as he stepped into view. It’s funny, isn’t it? Sometimes what you’re looking for has been right there all along, shouting over women on cable news shows.