Southern Gothic Princess

Growing up in a small town in the South, there was one phrase that Hayden Anhedönia heard often: “Be sure your sin will find you out.” As a six-year-old, she spent her afternoons hiding in the bathroom after church, terrified of the judgment of an omnipotent God watching her from on high. “I was convinced everything that I did was on display for God and everyone in heaven, that I had an audience at all times,” Anhedönia tells me over Zoom. She’s calling from her dimly lit bedroom in rural Alabama, where there’s just enough light to make out her self-drawn tattoos: a delicate crown of stick-’n-pokes just below her hairline, spelling out the Hebrew names of her favorite archangel and demon; a small cross nestled beneath her clavicle; the word please etched on her neck, which she inscribed in the mirror one day after taking ketamine. Behind her are dark wood walls, a plain metal bed frame, and an American flag… read more >