What I’m watching, reading, and listening to 12/8/22

Watching:

The White Lotus Season 2 on HBO

Even more anxiety and drama than Season 1. I love watching rich people problems!

Abbott Elementary Season 2 on Hulu

Season 1 got me hooked. Every character is likeable in their own way. It’s funny and genuine, probably the best comedy right now.

Reading:

As I’m going into a career in mental health, I am very intrigued in the way trauma is held in the body and how many mental “disorders” are all just a result of trauma.

Listening to:

Un Verano Sin Ti by Bad Bunny

Every track is danceable, even the ones about heartbreak.

Caprisongs by FKA Twigs

Emotional, vulnerable, magical. Every song on this album hits me somewhere. FKA Twigs has managed to stay true to herself but grow so much from her debut. This one is a masterpiece.

What I’m watching, reading, and listening to

Watching

I am A Killer on Netflix

Learn about how harm is committed and why prisons and policing do not prevent nor redress harm.

Insecure on HBO Max

Ready to see some black joy in the final season! I love Issa Rae.

Reading

Powerful messages that are benefiting my mental health and my understanding of others. I am increasing my empathy and forgiveness. This book is also serving as a great resource for the Buddhist group I lead which discusses relationship issues.

I am reading this for the Arabic language group I am a part of, though I am glad to finally read this classic. It is very quotable, and the wisdom is concise and coherent. It is a short and accessible read with a lot of value.

Listening to

My new favorite podcast! It debunks bullshit pseudo science. We need more real scientific info out there so people don’t have to deal with so much fear mongering around health. Life is hard enough without that BS.

I love the psychology behind cults and cult leaders. This led me down the rabbit hole of NPD (narcissistic personality disorder). I have had a lot of realizations about my life experiences through my research.

My new favorite song. I admire Demi’s honesty and vulnerability. They are a force of power and strength that inspires me to continue sharing my struggles in order to benefit others.

Rambling on BPD and more

My life didn’t make sense until I got diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 2020. As a kid, I had extreme anger, outbursts, and difficulty with friendships. I would oscillate between hating and loving my family. I was emotionally unstable due to the chaotic and traumatic environment I grew up in. In my adulthood, these trends only got worse. I had unstable and rocky relationships. Dating was the most volatile act ever, mostly due to the prevalence of ghosting. When I started dating my boyfriend, I became extremely codependent. I would cry any time we weren’t together and beg him to spend all his free time with me due to the perceived abandonment of him doing anything else. I went to Costa Rica to study abroad for a semester and it felt like my heart was ripped out being without him. I couldn’t adjust for at least a month. I lost so many friendships in the years after high school and college, and many of them were to due to the person ghosting me as well. Beyond relationships, I also had issues with my emotions. If I ever felt like someone was disrespecting me, something switched in me where I would become super intense and threatening with them. If anything unexpected happened in my day (which usually does), I would also “switch” and have a break down over it. Before I ever got any treatment for my mental illness, I also dealt with extremely bad anxiety and depression, and the anxiety affected how I lived every day. Going in public was such a risk since my sanity was always hanging by a thread. Anything unplanned happening could send me in a spiral. I always felt like an alien who couldn’t relate to other people. In group settings, I always felt drowned out and neglected. I also realized I was a people pleaser, and I acted differently around people based on how I wanted them to perceive me. I have no clear conception of my identity. I developed an eating and exercise disorder at the age of 14 and had it for many years, and I think this was also in part to my BPD. I had no identity, so fitness became my identity. (I’m now at a much healthier place with fitness and help others with this.) Getting diagnosed with BPD helped me a lot. I could finally put a name on what made me so different from others. I also got diagnosed with ADHD shortly after. So many of my traits made sense to me now, but I had even more confusion over my identity, as so much of me was just mental illness. I’ve been in treatment for over a year, and I’ve used medication, therapy, and a DBT support group for help. I’ve had some definite progress, but I still struggle. I’m in the process of trying to remember my entire life, and I know that sounds ridiculous but when you have mental illness you have a great deal of memory loss. Every time I spiraled or had suicidal ideation I don’t recall what happened before or after. I’m trying to remember when my symptoms started. I’m also rethinking a lot of the friendships I’ve had and trying to understand if something I did drove people away, since I’m such an “intense” person. However, I am 100% definite on my stance that ghosting is WRONG and I didn’t intentionally harm anyone so I didn’t deserve any of the ghosting that has happened to me. But it hurts so bad. Since I was actually abandoned, any real or perceived abandonment crushes my spirit. It’s like I built my identity off of being abandoned, so now I’m dependent on NOT being abandoned again to stay alive. I never know what the day is going to be like when I wake up. Lately, and I mean since I moved out of my dad’s house in January, I have lacked a lot of motivation to do things I used to do. I sleep as much as I possibly can now, because when I’m awake I’m so bored and lonely. I’m a productive person and I’m self-employed, but I still feel like there’s a gaping hole in my life. Please don’t try to tell me what the hole is, because I’m Buddhist and I know what mindfulness is and I know my life purpose and I know what goals are and I’m doing all that. The hole is a lack of identity due to my BPD. My crucial years of identity formation were filled with trauma, so I don’t think I ever really formed an identity. So now I’m like a shapeshifter or a chameleon. The combination of ADHD means that I go through phases of being absolutely OBSESSED with stuff. One summer I was obsessed with researching the prison industrial complex. Right now I’m obsessed with learning languages. It’s kind of cool because I’m really driven to learn but being extremely fixated on something can be stressful and exhausting and without these things, I still have no idea who I am. I don’t know who I am, besides what other people tell me. When other people talk about me, I get so anxious because I’m scared they’re going to represent me in a way that doesn’t match the idea I have of myself. I’m highly certain the two perceptions don’t match at all, but it’s hard to confront that. I’ve been on a long term journey of self discovery and I’m still empty handed. But it’s been 24 years in the making of a mentally ill person, so it’ll probably be another 24 at least to make me somewhat sane. I know there are some positives to my mental illnesses, like I’m super caring towards people, I’m super attentive, and really passionate about my pursuits. I don’t pursue things or people I’m not passionate about. Apparently there’s a thing as being too passionate. I’m not sure, but that’s what other people seem to tell me. A lot of people don’t like my personality, and I wonder if they knew I’m severely mentally ill if they would reconsider their opinion. I try to be the best person possible and be open and honest with everyone. I don’t intentionally try to hurt people. I’m very strict and serious about ethics, to the point where I hold everyone to really high standards, the standards I set for myself. But no one can live up to them. So it’s either be disappointed my whole life or lower or eliminate my standards. It’s exhausting being me. I’m finally tapering off a medication I hated so much and I can finally cry again, but I cried too much and got a migraine and got really sick. I’m not sure if being numb or feeling things is better. I feel everything too intensely. What’s sad is extremely depressing to me, and what’s joyful shoots me over the moon. BPD is very similar to bipolar, but I don’t have mania. I do have extreme mood swings though. There are a lot of terms to learn about BPD but I don’t feel like writing an educational piece; I’m satisfied with just rambling and if you’ve made it this far I appreciate you trying to understand what I go through. I’ve wanted to give up on life so many times, but I’m glad I haven’t. I’m interested to see what more I can accomplish, despite having a seemingly endless list of disabilities. It’s a challenge to myself to stay alive despite the odds. Now that I’ve got my diagnoses and the Internet to help me learn more about these conditions that often debilitate me, I believe I can work towards alleviating a lot of my symptoms. I’ve already done so through my treatment thus far. There is hope. For everyone. I live with absolutely soul-crushing depression, anxiety, BPD, ADHD, and C-PTSD and I’ve managed to find a purpose in life to make survival worth it. That’s why my job is to help others find their purpose and rise above the oppression of our culture and their own personal trauma. If I can do it, so can you. Hopefully you can have some empathy for what I deal with. I struggle a lot with empathy, but I’m trying to learn how to practice it so I can be better in my relationships. None of my illnesses are my fault, but it’s my job now to be the best person I can be and that’s what I’ll do for the rest of my life. Again, this isn’t an educational piece so please go research all of the mental illnesses I mentioned so you can gain some insight if you aren’t familiar with them. I share my story in hopes of helping alleviate some of the stigma of mental illness. It is so common and a lot of it we share due to living under capitalism, so we need to normalize vulnerability and community care, interdependence, and disability justice. Going into extreme detail is beyond the scope of this piece so please go do some more research. The more people who are brave, honest, open, and authentic, the more we can all actually and truly connect and transform. If anything I shared meant anything to you, please let me know. It’s lonely out here. Thanks for reading.

Binaries

Disney wants you to believe people are good or bad. But that’s not true. The lucky thing about humans is that we are so complex and creatively made, constantly contradicting our truths and accidentally living out someone else’s reality. We’ve all consciously decided to do harm to someone else at some point, and so what sets us apart then? The criminal injustice system tells a lie about the effectiveness of punishing to right wrongs. We can’t punish people into transforming justice and repairing relationships, or moving on from painful things. To have your pain locked away is to not have dealt with it, to let it continue to loom over you. For the better part of my life I let my mental disorder warp my thinking into black or white. Maybe I let things be binary, and all the things that didn’t fit on either side fell through the cracks of my life. I can’t take back all the segmenting, fragmenting, and splitting. But I can live in the present, where I can actually control what’s happening and how my destiny unfolds. I think part of my destiny is telling my story with all the nuances included. I think people should know I’ve harmed, been harmed, and been complicit in harm. I think this is a part of the human experience, and we can’t deny our role in systems of oppression, domination, and exploitation. But then again my black or white thinking activates and I’m worried I’m a part of the problem if I’m not a part of the solution. How can I be a part of all of the world’s problems? How could anyone possibly ever be a part of all the solutions? I think I put too much pressure on myself to be a perfect high achieving human and when reality falls short, like when I struggle to get out of bed for the 90th consecutive day this winter, I feel inhuman. I feel I didn’t live up to a standard which nobody imposed, a standard I just materialized out of thin air to demean myself. I put too much responsibility in the hands of individual people who are just trying to survive. Mental illness, disability, poverty, racism-and yet we’re all expected to be the best? We’ve sacrificed world improvement for personal development. You aren’t a project to work on. You’re okay the way you are. Maybe I’m the first one to tell you this. That’s the way capitalism is engineered. They make money selling you the solution to your total inadequacy. Today I choose to accept it. Sometimes I’m great, and sometimes I’m not. It gives me one less thing to worry about to know I can exist somewhere in between the glamour and the horror.

8/14/20 What I’m Watching, Reading, and Listening to

Watching:

I May Destroy You on HBO!!!

There are numerous articles already on this brilliant show created by Michaela Coel based on her own experience being drugged at a bar and sexually assaulted. The show deals with her processing the trauma and highlights all the tiny little ways we violate each other’s consent all the time and how huge that can be. I love emotionally raw and brutally honest shows about human relationships, like Ramy. This show needs a heavy trigger warning for sexual assault but if you can stomach some not extremely graphic but implied assault scenes and mention of assault, the lessons learned are incredibly profound and I haven’t seen any show tackle the topic of consent in such a nuanced and profound way as this one. Hold everyone up to the spotlight- we’ve all harmed and been harmed. Processing that as a society and striving to do better is something that can’t be concluded within 12 30-minute episodes, but Michaela’s storytelling allows us the space for introspection and analysis of our own character, which I believe is the whole point of the show.

Reading:

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex

Prison abolition is something I’ve delved deep into over the span of this pandemic. I joined a leftist book club and read The End of Policing by Alex Vitale, plus listened to endless podcasts with the likes of Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Angela Davis. I am definitely an abolitionist but as a cisgender person I need to learn more about trans issues all the time (as we all do), so when I saw that rapper/activist Noname’s book club was reading this book I suggested it to my book club. I’m only through a couple chapters but it’s already essential reading. It includes history from the LGBTQIA+ rights movement and makes a compelling argument for this movement to be abolitionist, because the mainstream white and upper class queer rights movement has not been. Trans people are policed just in their day-to-day lives and massively brutalized in the prison system, and mainstream activists have pushed for prison reform and legislation to protect queer folks and grant rights like serving in the military and marriage rights, but this book advocates for transformative solutions that weaken, rather than enforce, oppressive institutions such as the US government, the military, prisons, immigration, and healthcare. I’m so eager to delve deeper into the transformative approaches we can all support that will dismantle this imperialist country that is inherently violent and transphobic.

Listening to:

“Dreamland” album by Glass Animals

I discovered this band after they released their first album, ZABA when I was in high school. I’ve always been a fan of indie music and I’m so glad this band finally released an album with the word “dream” in it because their music is the definition of dreamy. I always feel transported to another place, time, and world when I listen to their songs. The wide ranging influences and references Dave Bayley makes reminds me of Alt J, who blew me away with their pop culture references like Alien and Where the Wild Things Are. Exposing myself to artists who are inspired by almost everything around them motivates me to be as impressionable as they are. This album is a story, and is best listened to in order, the way it was meant to be. The songs weave together and reference each other, regurgitating memories from childhood and nostalgia that help create the 80s/90s vibes. Glass Animals excels at making the themes they choose seep from everything they do at the time of each album.       Their sophomore album How to Be a Human Being was also a moving, evocative story accompanied by video game graphics and cohesive retro designs much like Dreamland is. Their exquisitely matched nostalgic, ethereal sound and aesthetic is likely what has made them a huge hit amongst various music fans. I’ve used the website Genius to learn the stories behind each song and listening to the album after I know the meaning has added another level of appreciation and awe for them. I love music with  deep meanings, profound words and sounds that blend like butter in your ears, leaving you with goosebumps in your car as the beat raises and drops, grateful for the journey but ready to hear it all over again. And sometimes, I just want music with infectious and danceable beats, and catchy and comical lyrics, and with this album everything I want is right there when I need it;  all my (musical) dreams come true. 

Other artists I’ve recently discovered:

Little Simz, CHIKA, Lady Leshurr, Ivorian Doll, HAWA, Flohio, and Dua Saleh (who actually introduced me to all these artists!!) British rap is my new obsession. Hearing a lot of these artists played in I May Destroy You is just another level of freaking awesomeness. I don’t know what sphere of influence I’ve stumbled upon, but it’s definitely the right one.

CHIKA’s debut album is packed with clever lyrics, dope beats and beat changes, and the swagger and confidence of someone who has a long future ahead of them in the music industry.

Dua Saleh is a nonbinary gender non-conforming alternative artist with a unique and distinctive sound. I was struck by the first songs I heard from Dua, “hellbound” and “cat scratch.” Dua’s vocals are powerful and haunting. I can feel the raw emotion, pain, and soul invested in their work and I’m excited to hear more beyond their Rosetta EP.

Grabbing hands

Sometimes, as I pass by a house that isn’t mine

I wonder what my life would be like if I had lived there

I wonder what moments these families share together

How many nights the dinner table is full versus empty

How many times the house is empty because they are in an exciting new place

How many mornings they hear “good morning” and how many evenings they hear “good night”

How many homecooked meals they enjoy

How kids get to be kids

How kids don’t have to cook and clean and care for themselves

How kids get to grow up in time like they are supposed to

How affection and communication are normal, and healthy

How conflict is addressed appropriately instead of resisted

How holiday decorations find their way up no matter what

How caring for one another is a common task where everyone shares responsibility

How they might even grab hands before a meal, maybe to pray

How I wouldn’t mind just so someone could touch me for a second and hold my hand

How many times I needed that and no one was here

How many times I literally leaned on my dog for support

How many times I cried on him and hugged him and felt him absorb my pain

How many nights I wished someone was here to watch the sunset

Not even, watch TV

Or watch each other

Or watch the time pass

And feel like nothing is lost

As I pass through my neighborhood all I want is something in these other houses

I know it’s in there

I know inside one of these houses with five cars and ten hands

There is an abundance of love

No one ever feels alone

These is love in the living room, the kitchen, the front porch, every room of the house

I witness it and my eyes beckon, I smile

I just want to be let in

I don’t want to take on life by myself anymore

I know I can do it alone

The point is I don’t want to

Everything is more fun with a partner

I can handle alone

I’ve done alone

I’ve aced it

I’m a pro

But I want to retire

I think “I wish I had a family”

I forget, I do

But they’re scattered, dispersed, disjointed, attending to other matters than my frail adult heart

I should’ve grown out of this years ago

But it’s only worse

Burns worse when you didn’t expect it to last so long

Stings when you’re the witness to every family’s fun every day but your own

Craving the simplest things, the littlest things, laughable and irrelevant to those who have them

Family meals and trips and plans

A home you don’t have to fabricate missions to escape

For fear of being swallowed whole

A family you can accept

Despite their separateness

I know how to be alone

All these years I’ve learned to survive but not to thrive

I’ve been alone enough times to grasp it

Now I reach for something more

I want my home to hold me like a net

I’d like to hover, but never drop

I’d like to float and fly above all the worries that plague me in the silence

I’d like to hear something other than other laughs, other cars, other bikes, other dogs

I applaud their fun

I applaud the love they’ve cultivated

From outside all I know is their chandelier

Or their ascending stairs

Their garage full of snacks and games

Their packed car for the weekend trip

Their boat, pulling out of the driveway

I sit in glee

I can only imagine how happy they are

Just having each other

And I wonder if I had that couch, those steps, that car, those bikes, that food coming out of the truck, those sprinklers to run through, that football to catch, that basketball net with people actually playing, that family crowded around for someone’s birthday, that excitement for something, anything, when it’s just a Sunday to us, cousins, family, extended family, someone bringing just what you need when you need it, hugs, kisses, laughs, grass, and sunsets

I wonder

With all of that what the difference is-

Whether I would be happier standing outside

Or on the inside, grabbing hands.

pet the lion

As an adult I had to learn how to stop being afraid of the dark

My tarot keeps telling me to face my shadow self

Pet the lion

I have recurring dreams I am being devoured by wild cats

I look for symbols but fail to follow them

I am looking for the light that is not there

Begging for sleep, another day

Pushing aside the platter of all I choose to not face

Why is it I am having the same nightmares as a child?

Why do I have the same fears?

What struck me so young-

Kept me so young

Learning to cope however I could fathom

Survival isn’t a lifestyle

I am always turning a corner on who I think I am

Who knew adults could be afraid of the dark?

Who knew kids could endure so much and seem so adult?

Who knew adults could endure so much and seem so child?

Maybe all these birthdays I have celebrated have been a parody

The day will never truly dawn on me until I accept dusk

Remember the universe does nothing personal, nature makes no attacks

It is all just a mental drama

And I am detaching myself more everyday from the repeated stories that have kept me from awakening

I am speaking the fears I thought too cursed to pronounce

By way of making them seem both real and valid, and constructed and vapid.

On misogyny, queer misogyny, and a new kind of fire

As a woman in this world I have grown accustomed to misogyny. The earliest memory I have of sexism is being told in elementary gym class I could do “girl push-ups.” I was just as restless then as I am today and always did the full version of every exercise. How was I going to get strong if I never challenged myself? Why were girls not encouraged to be strong? Throughout primary school boys would try to flirt with me by offering to hold my stuff or carry heavy things for me. Towards the end of primary school I learned what sexual harassment was, although I didn’t know it by name then. Boys tried to touch me, tickle me, and chase me at recess while I screamed at them to stop. They did not. By sixth grade every boy in my classroom would use sexual innuendos with me against my wishes. I wanted to avoid boys at all costs. I just wanted to be with my friends and escape the endless sexual attention from boys, but I quickly learned that was the only kind of attention I would get from the heterosexual boys. In middle school, it meant I adapted to this behavior and sought out male attention. It was validation. My body grew more curvy and I loved to wear tight-fitting clothing, but I was told many times by teachers and school administration that my outfits were inappropriate. I was told to wear my winter coat over a dress. I was told to find pants in the lost and found and change out of my shorts on the last day of ninth grade. I was made to believe my body was inherently sexual. I couldn’t show my shoulders or my legs because it was too sexual, and it would distract the heterosexual boys. I didn’t understand why my body was sexual and thus had to be hidden but boys in my school could wear tank tops and shorts without anyone making a big deal out of it. I learned about double standards, and I learned I had to accept them because it wasn’t going to change. I was socialized in the culture of this country that believes that women are to be silent, only speaking up when asked to, and sexual, only pleasing men when asked to. My body wasn’t for me, my voice wasn’t for me. I was to bow to others and serve. Of course, because I am a “natural born mother”, I must be a caretaker to everyone who needs care. I must be a people-pleaser to everyone who asks anything of me. This became me. I was the “yes” person all the way through college. The few times I did speak up and express my viewpoint I was called a bitch, a rude person, disrespectful. I was told to just be silent. Go with the flow. But I was a leader. I am a natural born leader and everyone knows leaders don’t lead by being silent and unmoved. Most leaders are men and men can get away with anything, so it was never a surprise that a woman doing so would be interpreted so negatively.

I constantly struggled with managing people’s expectations of me. How should a woman in charge act? I have always been very serious about my morals and ethics. I have integrity because I don’t make exceptions for my morals, and I freely share this information with others. I know very few people who are as committed as I am to doing what’s right. I do everything in my power to not negatively impact any living being or process in the universe. I stand for justice and I am fiercely political because I am fiercely invested in the well-being of everyone. We live in an extremely unequal society that is sickened by capitalism, and I want to do everything in my power to resist this. Most people are apathetic to what’s going on around them. I try to shake and wake those people up so they can take their part in the movement towards a better society. I realize as a woman I am perceived as extreme and radical for doing this. The first major life change I took was going vegan for the animals in 2015. A year later I watched The True Cost and swore off fast fashion. I have not bought anything but thrifted clothes or clothes from sweatshop free and eco-friendly companies since then. Then I delved into reducing my personal waste, recycling, reusing anything I could, swearing off certain wasteful products for good. I committed to many issues at once. I am always reading about how I can do better, be better, hence why I have a podcast called Do Better Podcast. I think the only thing that matters in life is our ethics- the impact we have on the world with our actions. I always want to stand on the right side of history. I am always willing to change a behavior of mine to be less harmful to the planet. I try to inspire others to be this engaged and connected to the universe. I was a very, very involved animal rights activist from the time I went vegan all throughout college, and I always combined my vegan activism with spreading awareness of other social justice issues, because I am well aware of the intersecting class, race, and ability issues with going vegan for some people. I try my hardest to not be a single issue activist, or to be colorblind (referring to racism that functions by denying the role of race in social injustices), or to ignore any issue at any time. We must simultaneously work on being our best selves and work on liberating our fellow humans so they too can be their best selves. Self-actualization is impossible if you don’t have your basic needs met.

So I think we can all always do better in some way, and I push and challenge those around me to do so. This has often not been well received by privileged folks who are in denial of how they contribute to social inequality. No one wants to admit they are part of the problem, and yet people continue to suffer gravely. Being a female leader has been challenging because I always feel my word is doubted, whether I am relaying factual information or using emotional appeals. I am also in the fitness industry and have been passionate about fitness for a long time, but I am constantly corrected by men on things I know are true. I try not to interact with many men because I have faced so much harassment, sexual and non-sexual, and I am terrified of being assaulted. The proportion of women who are assaulted by men is staggering (1 in 5 is a common statistic). I can’t take my chances and trust men. I have, and I have been physically stalked and verbally harassed because of it. I learn from experience. I learn what not to do, who not to trust, and that has become most cisgender men. I have become increasingly furious over gender inequality in recent years as I have watched man after man get away with serious crimes. The rapist Brock Turner is a prime example. I do believe him being white also plays a part in his mere six month jail sentence. But there are other famous cases of celebrities being absolutely evil and abusing and raping women and children and still being idolized. Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant come to mind. I will always maintain the stance that just because someone dies does not make them a good person. It is also horrifying that a man can literally admit to raping a woman and be publicly forgiven, yet a woman can’t even make a minor mistake without her career being ruined. I remember Kathy Griffin’s beheaded Trump photo and how it almost ruined her career for good. Her speaking out against the horrible hateful dictator we have as a president is worse than raping someone? I have seen women dragged in the media for any small thing, and often for changes in their bodies, since they are expected to follow society’s beauty standards, and yet male celebrities can literally assault people and still be considered national treasures. Sickening.

Everything I have learned and observed plus my cumulative life experiences have made me extremely bitter and angry. I recognize I am a white woman, so I don’t even have the worst of it, and that makes me even madder. The pain wrenches deep in my body and makes me hate and distrust almost everyone. As a queer woman I have tried to find refuge in the queer community, but I have not found out. It turns out queer people hate women too. I speak from many experiences, but my most recent experience still stings the most. I recently joined the board of an organization called Stonewall Sports that has queer sports leagues that play for fun and raise money for charity. This organization exists all over the country, but my experience is with the one in Detroit. The latter part of 2019 I started a queer yoga meetup group. I missed teaching yoga, and I wanted to meet some other queer people and make new friends. I only had two meetings, and ultimately had more support on Facebook than actual people who showed up, but my online presence led the leader of Stonewall Detroit to reach out and ask if I wanted to teach yoga for the organization. I was excited about the prospect of reaching more people and being more effective with the same goals I had for my own queer yoga group, so I agreed. Yoga was to be my baby, I was to lead the process. What unfolded over the several months we planned yoga was not pretty, and I did not lead the process. Every time I could give an opinion, I was ignored, talked over, or (literally) laughed at. I was scolded for missing events and meetings because I was working or traveling when I had already made the board leader aware of my schedule. I put in a lot of work planning yoga, but was told it was already planned at the last minute and I essentially just had to show up. The one social event I made it to I was struck by the lack of women in the organization. There were three as far as I know (I do not know how everyone identifies) and a lesbian couple I talked to told me they agreed that the club was not very diverse. It also lacked racial diversity. For a Detroit organization in a city that is 90% black, I saw maybe two people of color at the social gathering and as far as I know there was only one person of color on the board. When I joined I was told they had a “diversity and inclusion” person on the board but only heard that they dealt with fee waivers- letting people participate in the sports for free if they stated they could not afford to otherwise. After months of being treated like garbage by an all-male board, I finally stood up for myself and said it came off as very misogynistic that my views were never respected. The response I got was effectively gaslighting. The board leader said it was awful of me to call him misogynistic and took no accountability for his actions. He said, “it’s not your tone that is disrespectful, it’s the words you choose.” Now I was being told by a man which words I could and could not use, and that was enough. I quit the organization in person, and it felt so liberating. 2020 was my year to stop taking other people’s shit!

But what happened was disheartening, and it’s not an isolated case. The queer community has long been an exclusive space. The show POSE on FX highlights how hateful cisgender gay men have been of transgender people, cisgender women, and lesbians for decades. I have personally witnessed this hatred in the queer community. I was naive to think queer spaces would be any different than the rest of society. It’s a boys’ club. Women, non-binary folks, and transgender folks are not taken seriously, excluded, laughed at, and harassed. The face of Pride is a skinny cisgender white homosexual man. One of the last things I said to the board leader (who fits this description) before I quit and walked out was this: “Queerness is more than this. You need more women. You need more people of color. Queerness is so much more than this.” I have heard countless stories on the internet of gender-oppressed folks talking about how exclusive queer spaces can be. I still haven’t found any place that feels entirely welcoming, and I can only imagine how much worse it is for those who are not cisgender like I am, because I can fit into straight spaces and cisgender spaces, even though I don’t emotionally fit in or connect with those groups. I can pretend to feel at home, though I don’t. Many people who don’t present themselves in a socially conventional way can’t pretend to fit in anywhere, because they are not welcomed and they will be pushed out. I wish for a queer community that embraces everyone and highlights and amplifies the voices and self-expression of those who have been pushed out and shut down, which historically is not white men. Now that the world is becoming more open to queerness, white gay men need to realize they have had their time in the spotlight. Most mainstream media with queer characters have featured white gay men. Lesbians are often the punchline in shows like Friends and even the more recent show Modern Family. There is a very clear message sent to non-male queer people: you are not valid, you are not important, you are not seen. I don’t want to echo this in anything I am involved in which is why I could no longer be a part of an organization I knew was squandering my voice because I am a woman. The board leader before I quit bragged to me that so many people have come and gone from the organization because they “couldn’t handle it.” His complete lack of self-awareness floored me. I realized these board members were probably from other oppressed groups and probably quit for the same reason I did. My heart wrenches for those people, and I can only imagine how many organizations on a national level are reinforcing oppression while claiming to work against it.

I want to believe there are organizations and efforts out there that are working effectively by everyone, for everyone, and with everyone. I am still searching for one, but I am realizing I may need to start my own. I am still figuring out how to best use my limited time and resources to support the most people. I do not prioritize myself or my voice but I recognize my mind is valid. My thoughts are valid. I have been told my entire life that the only thing of value about me is my body because it can be used to please men, but I am untangling this ideology that has brainwashed me. Little by little, year by year, I am standing up for myself. I am cutting men off and letting them know I will not be their puppet and I will not continue to be silenced. I have a voice, and I use it not just for myself but for all the other oppressed groups who are ignored and excluded. I use my voice and exert my power to resist oppression wherever I find it, even if it’s in my own backyard. I denounce policing the way marginalized folks express themselves, and validate anger, sorrow, distrust, and bitterness towards one’s oppressors. I believe and listen to experiences of others going through similar and worse situations to what I went through with Stonewall. I reject being a people pleaser and a male-pleaser and I commit to pleasing myself and working for the greater good regardless of who I piss off. I criticize my leaders, I criticize myself as a leader and a follower, and hold everyone to the same moral standard. I cease to internalize my oppression so I can stop the cycle and force a man to question the way he uses his privilege to brutalize. I don’t just hope for better, I help make things better by practicing what I preach, by being fearless, charging forward, focusing on the effectiveness of my efforts, and caring for my soul at the same time by not allowing others to squander me any longer. I believe in callout culture/accountability culture fully, and although this is only one small instance, by sharing my story I am re-emphasizing the importance of standing up for oneself and doing what’s right. Whenever it arises, we must resist oppression. We must call out oppressors. We must risk our public reputation, our friendships, and our personal stake in things to stand for what’s right not just when it is convenient, but ALL THE TIME. I know as a woman I am expected to keep the peace, but I refuse to do so while so many people suffer in our broken system. I refuse to be complicit in situations of injustice. I vow to liberate myself whenever possible by not allowing men to treat me poorly or objectify me. I have a life of trauma under my belt as a queer woman, and I will always be working against messages society sends me about who I should be, but I know I am strong enough to keep pushing and creating a better world. I know how convenient it would be if I believed them every time they told me I should do a “girl push-up” or the metaphorical equivalent of that throughout my entire life, but I have always resisted. I have actively defied norms my entire life until I have gotten to my emotional breaking point where I will not tolerate any more misogyny. This resistance has become my means of living. Although I embody physical strength in every sense, this vigor is more than a physical emanation. I am more than my human body. My grit shines forth from the blood of this trauma and lights my path forward. I am no longer what anyone expects me to be. I am a new kind of fire.

Obituary

I’ve been divorced from the question of what I want and married to what I think people want me to do for so long I can’t even feel rightness in my bones anymore. It feels foreign and I must shut it down, lest an insurgence begin. Lest a revolution begin. It’s too dangerous to prioritize my spirit. It involves too many goodbyes. Too much nostalgia swept under the rug. I’ve evaded the work for so long it has piled up and built walls around my home to where even this isn’t safe. You can’t run forever. You can’t deny the truth forever. It will all start to bleed through your walls, it will show on your flesh and your bones will puncture your skin and your life will be incarnated. You will die anyways. You might as well die doing what you love. You might as well live a little before. I’ve convinced myself there isn’t much time left, but every easy breath I take opens me up to the possibility I was wrong. Honestly, I hope I’ve been wrong about a lot of things; I hope the universe doesn’t want me dead and all of the bad things aren’t going to happen to me just because I can’t stop thinking of them. I hope the universe sends me every lesson I need whether that’s in the shape of a flower or a bruise because I’m starting to remember what matters again. The development of my spirit. The releasing of my wounds. There’s something more than what I’ve claimed to be; no one quite understands but every moment I feel it culminating a little more, a tide rising inside where the words don’t reach. Every moment is drawing me closer to my destiny. If I doubt a single second I disrespect all the intricate magic it took to get me here, and that’s a poem I’m not prepared to write. That’s an obituary.

Ellipses

It’s the same as my childhood

My face is wetness

I’m curling my body into positions that won’t feel very good later but I’m convincing myself this is what I need right now

Everyone I’ve ever loved is gone and there is no one here to dry my tears and pat my back

I sometimes wonder how far I’m willing to go for a little love. Or something disguised as it.

I’ve fallen for it a lot.

It’s not something I’m good at

Discerning what it really is from what I convince myself it is

I’ll never really know because most of my stories don’t have a proper ending

They trail off like ellipses

I curl my body tighter

I can crack every bone right now but no one would hear it

I could crack every one but the vital one that would kill me

I would do anything to have your fingers trailing it right now

Whispering in my ear how convincingly human I am

Am I convincing?

Am I playing the part right?

I didn’t expect the entire thing to be a tragedy but I’m learning as I go

And I hope I don’t disappoint

I hope you didn’t realize I’m nothing you were hoping for

I’m much less and much more in the ways that perplex the both of us

I’ve never met a bundle of thread like myself

Have you?

Have you ever met anyone like me?

Do you remember the first time we met?

I do.

I dropped everything to be exactly in that moment, where I thought- this might actually turn out okay

This might not be a total disaster

And it wasn’t

It was so perfect in ways I could’ve never expected because I had no expectations

And maybe that’s my problem now

I’m choking on my own gut wrenching idea of how things should be

But I’m lost and confessing and begging for a sign I’m doing the right thing

I never said I was good,

I only showed you I was trying.

Trying to lean into our love just a few inches more

Enough to satisfy but not enough to unravel

I’ve always been stuck in some unfinished painting

But I want you to burn everything

All the nights I laid in this exact room

I wished for an airplane to crash through the roof and crush me

Now I wish for one to rescue me

Now I wish I could wave my hands and yell “HELP!” And someone would come and I could tell them I’ve been doing this for days and weeks and months and years, probably.

That I’ve never stopped living in panic and disaster. And my ship has wrecked centuries ago, but I never made it out alive actually. What you’re seeing is a corpse. What you’re hearing is the voice of someone who cut their body in half a long time ago. Someone who wished the final ending had just come already.

Instead of waiting around and wanting and wishing I should have been in the forest dancing alone or with you. I can’t decide if I wish I never met you. I don’t want to regret anything but it’s eternal torture to never know if this is our future

I’m always choking on words and tears and ideas

There’s composure at times but that’s my illusion. Being alive is my illusion. I don’t know what to do with this body.

I’m holding it captive for now, in this bed, which is really just a mattress on the floor, which is really just some fabric on some wood, which is really just some of the earth sitting on top of more of the earth. Which is really just a blue and green sphere, like I drew it as a kid. Before I knew the millions of shades of venom in the universe. I only used two colors. That’s all I needed. It’s been lifetimes since things were that simple but I’m still hoping to one day hear a heartbeat and just be thankful there is life in this body.