Ice Skating // Home
When I was home for the holidays, I’d take slow walks with my family dog, Cody. My favorite part of those walks was reaching a small pond in our neighborhood. It felt like something out of a postcard — barren trees towering over snow-coated water, the archetype of the winter I had been longing for while in California.
But as the days passed, the comfort of being home gave way to familiar patterns. The novelty wore off, and my family’s dysfunctional dynamics began to show again. I started to imagine the experience like skating on that pond: at first, gliding joyfully atop thick ice, but with each passing moment, the ice grew thinner and more precarious. Eventually, everything felt on the verge of collapse, descending into chaos.
This piece was born from that feeling. It’s imperfect, dark, and I don’t know what you would call it, but writing it helped me make sense of the past month.
A drawing I made with watercolor, pen, and colored pencil. [Image Description: A drawing of myself ice skating atop a frozen pond. The pond is surrounded by snow, plants, and barren trees. ]
The pond is breathtaking at first, a novelty of the Northeast. I watch the winter sun dance on the thick and glossy ice – a flat surface made dynamic. I shift my weight from my left foot to my right, making a satisfying crunch in the snow and mimicking the barren limbs of the oaks and maples, methodically swinging in the December breeze. My stomach flutters as I sit down to lace up my skates, and I wonder whether my muscles will remember how to move atop the stretching surface in front of me. I finish tying the daintiest bows my knobby fingers will allow and warily step onto the ice.
I’ve never seen a fridge like this. The way the fluorescent light bounces off yogurt and seltzer containers – its beauty is staggering, holy even. I let the cool air caress my cheeks as I witness the glory inside. I am filled with appreciation to even witness the magnificence of this cool, metal box, let alone indulge in its contents. I pull my eyes away from the fridge and toward my dog, Cody. I pet him like I’ve never felt his soft fur before, like I’m 12 years old and relishing in the high-pitched, barking, wet joy that is a puppy.
My dad assumes his spot on the big blue chair in front of the TV. He sits down gingerly, placing his drink carefully on the side table. I know that soon, he and the chair will merge, becoming a lump of fabric, snores, and lips stained with red wine. But it doesn’t disgust or infuriate me – not yet. I am simply in awe of his commitment to routine, his display of the tenacity of human habit. I watch the slow transformation of him and the chair as I pad upstairs toward my bedroom’s cool, blue light. I can imagine myself falling into this habit: gratitude, rest, the motions of a lazy winter.
The gritty layer of snow that once coated the bright ice is gone, swept away by gusts of December wind. I can tell the surface is thinner now by the way my skates slide on its sleek surface. The muscle memory finally kicks in. It feels like I’ve been on this pond my whole life – drawing circle after circle with the blades of my skates.
But the wind is picking up now, piercing through the down of my jacket and striking my core. I’m pushing my bare fingers deeper into the vast pockets of my jacket when my skate catches on the ice. My center of gravity shifts forward, and my freezing fingers swing through the air, searching in vain as I head toward the hard surface.
My bed forms a soft hug as I slip into my sheets – its cotton embrace holding and reassuring me as I read a book. I could have been sleeping for 15 minutes or 15 hours when I feel the pressure. The sheets that were once an embrace morph into a forceful arm, pushing me deeper into the hard mattress. I’m stuck in this bed, this room, kept there by two vaguely familiar men.
Suddenly, the sheets let me go – I gasp for air, making sense of my new autonomy. The room is my room, and the men were two I knew from high school. It’s strange how we always talk about haunted houses, but never haunted memories.
It’s morning now and I hear my parents before I see them – their disgruntled voices and a whirring blender like the alarm clock I never asked for. Somehow, my request that I had a rough sleep and don’t want to talk this morning is a personal affront to my father. God forbid his thoughts aren’t revered at every given moment by every given person under this roof. The fridge is still glowing – beautiful to behold, but its contents are speaking to me now, or am I speaking to me now? The voices tell me that if I withhold, close the fridge door, I could take back control of this situation, this house, the nightmares, this family. I ignore them and take out a yogurt, choke it down as tears fill my eyes and start to burn my nose. I look out the window at the breathtaking barren trees, searching for some sort of sign, omen, or mooring that will bring me back to safety.
I know I shouldn’t be here, yet I remain, planting down with my left skate then my right, like it’s the only movement I’ve ever known. Puddles of water dot the ice now, like sequins on a satin gown. The chill has stripped my fingers of all feeling as I slice through the cold air, fast enough that tears form at the corners of my eyes. I barrel toward the middle of the pond when I stumble forward again, bracing my wrists on the wet ice. Strangely, I don’t feel the pain of my chin hitting the hard surface, but I taste the metallic flavor of blood. For a moment, it’s nice to taste, to feel something, anything other than the bitter cold – but then I hear the crack, and the freezing water seeps into my down jacket.
I’ve been staring at the same wall for what feels like hours, hoping the white paint will somehow transmit to me the strength required to go through the expected holiday motions. I hear my father’s deep and lilted voice – already wet with alcohol, I’m sure – and I wish I had a sword and armor to protect me from what I’m sure will ensue. We get about three hours of peace until the yelling starts. I can’t remember what I said that prompted it, but each word pierces my skin all the same. I stand there and let him yell, watch the spit and words fall out of his mouth, because feeling this is better than feeling nothing.
I’m no longer listening, but his cruel words seem to coat my body and drip down my arms. While he is still shouting at me, I take the opportunity to stare at my father, my mother, my brother, and grieve the versions of them I spent so many hours creating in my mind – the ones that support me, that hold me when I cry, that truly see me.
I gingerly step away and scale the stairs toward my room. The once shiny fridge looks dull, and my bedroom doesn’t invite rest, but ghosts. I’m so tired, but I climb into bed expecting the nightmares now, thinking about how I should have left a week ago.
10 inconvenient, clumsy, stark, and significant truths and lessons I learned while getting my college degree
December, 2024
First, some background:
I decided to go to college 3,000 miles away. This was genuinely as far as I could get from my hometown and family while staying in the same country. It was part of a calculated effort to escape their controlling and conservative values in favor of the supposedly liberal nirvana that is California. However, the four years I’ve spent getting my degree in Santa Barbara were, without a doubt, some of the hardest of my life. It was a rocky, unpaved, and arduous road – filled with lumps and bumps that would send me off my path entirely, leaving me constantly clawing my back back on track.
I can’t even say I’m looking back on it yet. Living at home with my family is far from a sustainable or safe situation for me, so I’ve decided to return to SB for a few months to finish out my apartment’s lease and work part time. But the “college” part is over for me, and it looked and felt incredibly different from what I thought and expected. I want to shed light on the messiness of that experience – what I learned even when I wanted to quit and felt there was no worthwhile end to the road I was trudging down. Sure, I’m proud of the student I became, what I learned, what I’ll take with me. But I’m most proud of surviving.
My college experience – frankly, my life so far – doesn’t look like that of many people I know, but that doesn’t make it less valid or valuable. It’s in that sentiment that I want to share the truths and lessons I learned and how I came to learn them. I know I’m young, and I know close to nothing, but I think even half-baked insights are worth throwing into the void. This is not self-help, not a guide – just a being sharing their experience and hoping someone might feel seen by it or inspired to share their own.
pen and water color drawing by me about the underwhelming and numb feeling that comes with graduation. [ image description: Myself standing in a black graduation cap and gown with a blue and yellow stole. Underneath I am wearing a white jumpsuit and brown boots. My hands are at my sides and I look out saying, “I guess, that’s it?” The background is a washed out gray with vertical pen strokes all over. ]
1) No matter how far I run or try to forget, my body will remember
In all honesty, there was no specific program or professor that drew me towards UCSB – it was simply the farthest I could get from my family and hometown. But even 3,000 miles away, the sanitized, beige walls of my dorm room had me waking up gasping for air, eyes searching for some semblance of safety. It took me 3 months to realize the hospital-like corridors reminded me of the institution I found myself forced into at age 12.
Even in my first joyful, queer relationship, I found myself panicked and frenzied, reacting to my partner’s behavior. I spent many restless nights wrestling with how their behavior reminded me of my dysfunctional family. When I began to experience my worst bouts of depression, dread, and fear in my college apartment, I wasn’t just living through that current period of depression — but reliving every episode I had suffered before. After that, every time I returned to my apartment after a break or even a class, stepping inside felt like stepping into a cloud of those terrifying emotions.
Living with C-PTSD has felt like a dark blob that mirrors my every step, encompassing moments and movements until I am entirely shrouded in its sinister darkness. I’m not quite sure where relief lies yet, but I know it doesn’t lie in distance. I know the value of compassion and of a wonderful therapist. I know how to lean into and listen to what my body and mind are trying to tell me — to warn me of. I know that instead of spiraling into anger and fear, I can (or try to) say thank you to my body and mind, for trying to keep me safe.
Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I lay reclined on a big blue chair in a corner. A dark gray blob surrounds myself and the chair. Above me reads: THE BLOB. ]
2) Many things can exist at once
My autistic ass loves black and white thinking. The notion that something or someone might have been both helpful and hurtful, both caring and not caring, both exhilarating and exhausting makes my mind spin in confused circles. But remarkably, most things, experiences, and people cannot be singularly summed up; they are paradoxical, confusing, nuanced, and human.
I think of my first real relationship – or the first one not rooted in compulsory heterosexuality. My partner was loving and smart, joyful and grounded. Through being with them, I learned invaluable lessons about extending the love and care I deserve towards myself and trying to live a life rooted in pleasure and empowerment. But they didn’t always make me feel smart; they often pushed me away, and they ultimately broke my heart. It took a long time to realize that it’s ok for all of those truths to exist at once.
I think of attending the countless classes it took to complete my degree. How much I learned, how many rabbit-holes I had the privilege of going down, the possibilities they unlocked, the truths they unveiled. How much I enjoyed listening to a passionate professor geek out about their field of interest. But attending class also felt like an insurmountable wall. Constantly inaccessible no matter how many emails I sent, complaints I filed, and letters from my therapist I forwarded. I constantly felt like the entire institution, which was giving me so much, also blatantly didn’t care about me or other disabled students. I’m still struggling to understand that.
3) My physical disability saved my life
Quite a stark statement, I know. One that society would never condition us to say in a million years. And yet, it’s true for me and feels like one of the defining truths of my experience while at college.
I moved across the country in, unknowingly, some of the worst mental shape of my life. I was clumsily emerging out from the closet, but I didn’t love myself – not yet. I had been harming and punishing my body for years, and at that point, it took the form of over-exercising. My body was not equipped to be running miles upon miles every day, and yet there I was, willing myself to do it anyways. But on my second night sleeping in my dorm room, I sprained my ankle – badly. I tried to run through it, started going to the dreaded college gym filled with stinky, homophobic frat boys, but my ankle continued to give way.
The injury seemed to travel through my body – to my knees, shoulder, back, hips, and wrists. It would be years until I got an answer for why these injuries kept occurring. But as painful as they were, they forced me to stop pushing my body beyond its limits, to find value and coping skills in other areas of my life, to actually sit with the pain, the grief, the loathing, and the trauma for once. That was an ugly time. But if the symptoms of my physical disability hadn’t cropped up then, maybe I would have continued harming and hating myself. I’m not saying I magically stopped struggling – far from it – but I can finally say that I’m grateful to be alive today and fundamentally loving myself, and my physical disability played a significant part in that journey.
Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I am running on a path with my hair pulled back and eyes looking forward. I am wearing a blue tank top, blue shoes, and short shorts. A speech bubble reads, “DON’T MIND ME! JUST RUNNING BECAUSE I HATE MYSELF <3” ]
4) Friendships will end, and that’s ok
Before college, I never really had any large-scale friendship breakups – or at least none that left scars. They usually happened over boys I convinced myself I was in love with, or we just drifted apart by going to different schools or moving into new neighborhoods. Friendships felt, I guess, simple – you become friends, you stay that way.
The past four years though, have not felt that way.
Apparently I’m not the best at spotting yellow, red, or even crimson flags in a person as we are developing a friendship, and it’s hard for me to notice if the dynamic is taking a turn. For example, I’ve often accidentally become the “therapist” or “mentor” friend, something I don’t realizing is happening until I’m deeply entrenched in the distress of this dynamic, thinking, “Holy shit!! How did I get here?? How do I get out??”
This has unfortunately happened a few times, and it’s caused a lot of pain — both at the person for helping engineer that type of situation and at myself for being oblivious to it! I can’t say I didn’t blame myself at first, but I’m learning to give myself grace. I’m also learning that I feel better without those people in my life. To put it simply, I’m learning that no friend should be stealing my sparkle and that doesn’t make me a bad person or friend.
Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I stare directly at the viewer with my hands gripping my head in anguish. Above me reads: HOLY SHIT!! HOW DID I GET HERE?? HOW DO I GET OUT?? ]
5) I am not broken, I was never broken
My whole life I’ve either been in a state of hiding or being taught to hide. I felt – and the world reinforced – that there must be something very wrong and broken about me that I must keep to myself. But sequestering my most vulnerable and true thoughts and feelings left me in a state of perpetual isolation. I felt like there was a glass pane separating me from the rest of the world – I was condemned to look through it for eternity, to watch others’ easy laughing, smiling, and conversation. I became very good at pretending, at mirroring the dance I saw playing out behind the glass.
But pretending is exhausting, and that struggle and isolation seemed to climax when I moved across the country for school. I was navigating an institution of 25,000 people that made me feel deeply invaluable and alone. My friends seemed to be having the times of their lives while I was breaking down into panic attacks everyday, and everyone around me was physically adept while my body was breaking over and over again. There were a lot of factors at play during that time, but it was fundamentally the deep pain of a disabled person who didn’t have the words for it yet.
However, there was some teeny-tiny part of me, deep inside, that knew I wasn’t broken, that knew I needed tools to live and celebrate the way my brain and body are wired, instead of railing against them. I followed that intuition down a pretty gnarly path, but it eventually led to slivers of help, healing, and truth. Diagnoses aren’t important for everyone, but for me, they saved my life and gave me permission to exist as I am, as I’ve always been.
Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I sit with my knees drawn towards my chest. I’m looking away from the viewer and into a pane of glass. Within the pane two individuals are laughing together in front of a building. Below me is the phrase, “THROUGH THE GLASS…” ]
6) Objectivity is porous
Oddly enough, one of the main constants in my life from above 4th grade and beyond is that I knew I wanted to be a marine biologist. (Maybe it’s a queer thing?) But within a month of college, it became increasingly clear that my neurodivergent brain could not intuit general chemistry and biology in a massive lecture hall. (I’m still convinced the only reason I passed Chem 1A was because I cried visible tears onto my final.) Even so, I found ways to continue down that path without taking those classes: I switched my major, started working in labs on campus, earned a science fellowship, and even got a job taking surveys while scuba diving (that truly wrecked my body).
The deeper I got into the world of doing “good science,” I couldn't shake feeling that it was a futile attempt to grasp and control a force we should instead be learning to coexist with – nature. Don’t get me wrong, science is important; but at what cost? I can only watch my boss crack open so many “invasive” purple sea urchins before I start to wonder if it was really necessary, or how one could go about asking for the urchin’s consent.
I tried to pivot to science communication after growing wearing of laboratory work, but I was told that each article I wrote wasn’t “objective” enough. It was mind-boggling to me. How are we expected to get people to care about science without humanizing it, without appealing to our shared experiences? That’s when I made the leap for myself. I decided that the real learning lives in the gray areas – the words, the conversations, the questions, the subjectivity – and I would do whatever it takes to immerse myself in that type of education.
A pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: Two hands hold a purple sea urchin. A speech bubble from the urchin reads, “I DO NOT CONSENT.” ]
7) Rest.
In a way, college felt like one big saga of trying, failing, and trying again to emerge from burnout. For years I was literally running on empty, a shell of myself. There were many scary times when I couldn’t differentiate the shell from who I was beyond it. I vividly remember the first weekend night I chose to stay in my dorm room instead of seeing friends. I started a painting that still hangs on my wall today. I remember thinking, I am so much happier right now – alone on my dorm room floor – then I would ever be at a party or in a friend’s room.
Naturally, that night turned into another, which turned into dedicating myself to the art of saying no, which turned into literally centering my entire life around the rest I need. It wasn’t a magical flip of a proverbial switch – I didn’t really have that much agency in the choice. At some point my body and mind simply couldn’t function in a lifestyle where I was constantly spreading myself thin, getting overstimulated, and burnt out.
Today, I barely function as it is, but the little functioning I can manage is due to the rest I prioritize. I still say yes to things I most definitely should have said no to, then I get drained or I get a migraine. I’m still learning not to blame myself for that and to instead give myself grace. 18-year-old shell-of-myself would likely scoff at the lifestyle I lead today, but I don’t really care! I love my quiet life, and I’m so proud of the journey it took to cultivate it and find rest that nourishes and restores me.
8) The value of words
As a little kid, my nose was constantly in a book. But from the beginning of middle school to the beginning of college, I mostly lost touch with reading – my mind was probably too full of mental distress and the performance of “normalcy” (presenting neurotypical, cis, heterosexual). But during my first big breakup, though, I found myself in an English course where books seemed to find me when I needed them most. Slowly, books started to hold me when I felt alone; they became my teachers when my professors weren’t, and my company on many sleepless nights.
Not just books per-se, but narratives, storytelling, words – they are a mirror, a portal, a bridge, and a warm embrace. This scaled-up consumption of words led to writing my own – a hunger to connect through them, to throw them out into the void. Not just pretty strings of words that tie into beautiful knots and bows, but the ugly, gnarled, shameful and no-good words that sometimes seem even more valuable to me.
And also not just using words in a specific, controlling, “objective” manner – as taught by many of my professors – but breaking away from that structure so my thoughts find their home. It’s through this writing — the kind that my professors would likely scoff at — that I make sense of myself and the world. Or I get more confused, and that’s part of the journey too.
Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I am kneeling on the ground in front of a book that is almost twice my size. As I open it, it looks like there is a light coming from within it. ]
9) I am a seasonal being
The fact that Southern California has a mild climate is something I honestly didn’t give much thought to before moving there. I simply wanted to escape, and secondary aspects like weather just seemed like an added novelty. I know now that yes, there are seasons in Southern California, but not the sudden, roaring, and magnificent transitions I had grown up with in the Northeast.
Without the familiar, undeniable markers of winter, spring, summer and fall, I feel unmoored, confused, stuck in some string liminal space, waiting for something to give way. The monotony of the sun often drives me mad – day after day I imagine her continual mockery of my sullen, exhausted demeanor. I know the sun is not committing a personal affront to me, but it often feels that way. I sometimes cry tears of joy on a rare day of rain or clouds.
When I go home – something I usually dread – I feel this newfound ecstasy and appreciation for a cool gust of winter wind, a warm summer rain, and the spring robins that emerge as the trees start to bud. These seasonal shifts are the grounding of my existence. They guide me to hibernate, to awaken, to cycle, to mirror the world outside my window. It was something I had always taken for granted — until I didn’t have it anymore.
Pen and watercolor drawing by me. [ image description: I am facing the viewer, wearing a purple hat with cat ears, a blue scarf, and. cardigan. Behind me it is snowing and a speech bubble reads, “I AM COLD, BUT I AM HAPPY.” ]
10) I am just beginning
The lesson I am currently learning is a significant one, but it’s also a tough pill to swallow. Because of my neurodivergent/mental illness cocktail, I want to believe I have everything figured out. I crave routine. I want to know exactly what I’m doing, how I’ll be feeling, and what I’ll be needing tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. Unfortunately, I’m learning that’s not exactly how life works – especially with a dynamic disability – and that’s terrifying.
I find comfort in reminding myself that yes, obviously I don’t have it all figured out; I haven't even lived that long or learned that long. It’s only been two years trying to exist semi-authentically. I have yet to fully love in this form, deeply connect with other neurodivergent, disabled individuals, and create the art I truly want to create.
This boundless possibility is terrifying too — but it’s also breathtaking and empowering that my biggest excitement and superpower is simply waking up and showing up every day as my most authentic self. Pardon me for sounding like RuPaul, but it’s true. Being alive is something that fills me with joy – and lots of fear – but mostly joy and gratitude, and I haven’t always been able to say that.
when will my body be my own?
November, 2024
TW: self harm, eating disorders, medical trauma, sexual violence
It’s been almost 10 years since I was institutionalized for an eating disorder. The older I get, the more I realize how much more harm than help that experience caused—and how deeply my experience with my eating disorder has always been connected to my transness.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about top surgery and the hurdles one has to overcome to obtain it—especially today. It’s made me hyperaware of my body and the stark reality that I’ve never truly felt agency over it. My body has never really felt like my own.
I hope that one day it will.
This poem is an exploration of all of that.
i was 12 years old when I learned my body wasn’t mine. my teachers were the lumps of flesh on my chest, snickers from boys when i tried to join the football team, and girls giggling at my ironed khaki shorts. i tried to stop it all. i thought that if i starved the flesh maybe it wouldn’t betray me, if i calculated it’s movements, maybe it wouldn’t change. they said i wanted, needed control. but they never asked why. they called 911, they dressed me in itchy hospital gowns, they put me on a schedule, confined me to a dull room. they pumped me full of calories, antipsychotics, and promises of elsewhere, elsewhen. they called me healed, and left me in pieces. the body may recover but the mind never does. it begins to search for agency, worth, love, belonging – all the things they stole along with my body. to a broken 13 year old, i thought these things existed in femininity: in mascara, push-up bras, cakey foundation. snapchat nudes, sneaking out, movements studied, practiced, and performed. but i found no agency, no worth, no love, no belonging. only a body and mind, scarred, violated, foreign. i wanted to be numb. maybe at 1 am with vodka burning my throat, i’d look in the mirror and see someone i recognize. maybe at mile 10, with knees aching and ankles cracking, they would feel like my own. maybe in california, with the pacific breeze caressing my cheek, i’d know who i am. but finding myself was never a game of hide and seek, an exploration, a voyage. i oozed out of myself during early mornings gulping for air, my dorm room, mirroring a hospital corridor. i trickled down my checks as my first love slipped through my fingers. today, i meet myself each morning. i stare in the mirror – perplexed, terrified, grateful i’m still here. i’m different than i thought. i always was. i wonder, if i could go back, would i tell myself there is nothing wrong, nothing i have to stop? but how do you explain color to someone who lives in a world of black and white? how do you explain nonbinary to someone who lives in a world of boy and girl? it’s been 10 years and i’m still trying to own my body. reclaim it from them: my family my peers the system the institution the men i let touch me the men i didn’t. and i’m still wondering – when will my body be my own?
Blending in
October, 2024
“Change if you want to for yourself, not to keep someone or stay in a place/organization. Change because it is your path, not to contort into spaces you have outgrown.” - adrienne maree brown
When I first read this quote in Pleasure Activism a few weeks ago, I felt it down to my core. Like adrienne maree brown had spoken the words and feelings already vibrating inside me, sending them into a chaotic frenzy — bouncing off of each other and crashing at the center of my consciousness.
I’m someone who hates transitions. I cling to routine like a safety net, so it’s rare that I crave change. But right now? I’ve never wanted it more. And not just change, but a new chapter. An escape. An awakening. Here, in Isla Vista — my peculiar college town — I feel completely out of place. Like a clumsy giant moving through a world built for smaller people, knocking things over, drawing stares, and twisting myself into spaces I’ve outgrown. I'm longing to escape this discomfort, to end my chapter in this Southern California hobbit-hole. But first, I need to graduate.
By “graduate,” I don’t just mean shaking a hand and accepting a diploma — although even that feels deeply terrifying right now. I have a whole quarter left between now and that finish line. That means ten more weeks of clumsily contorting myself around this too-small-for-me town — going to class, meetings, work, grocery runs, Target trips. The boring yet necessary things you do to feed yourself and exist as a human being while getting your college degree.
At the end of each day, though, I savor the moment I step into my apartment — the only place in this town where I don’t feel like an out-of-place giant but a human free to take up space, fill the sink with dirty dishes, mummify myself in my heated blanket, scream Caroline Polachek while making my fourth meal of Annie's Mac that week, and light concerning amounts of candles instead of the dreaded “big light”. My apartment is my sanctuary, and it’s a privilege to live alone — a situation that allows me to breathe (or scream) out the frustrations of feeling intensely out of place, and be gloriously, messily myself.
The apartment has two windows: a tiny one by my bed, where I accidentally flash passerby while changing, and a massive floor-to-ceiling one beside the couch. When I first moved in, my mom insisted on buying sheer curtains for that big window. They still hang proudly today, peppered with countless mystery stains, making them more of a sheer-polka-dot. I’m never sure if people can see me through them. Sure, I could step outside and check, but the thought of hobbling out into the street to look back up at my apartment feels unbearable. Too many things could go wrong — I could get stared at, yelled at, hit by one of the billion Toyota 4Runners that roam this godforsaken town. I’d rather live in my ignorant bliss, imagining the curtains protect me from the looks of passerby as I binge Drag Race UK for the third hour in a row.
I also spend a lot of time staring through the gossamer fabric. It’s not really something I can avoid, given the window takes up an entire wall of my apartment. From my lookout perch I watch young couples laughing on the apartment steps across the street, early morning joggers (are they ok??), failed attempts at parallel parking, drunk twenty-somethings throwing up into bushes on a Friday night, and like clockwork, a mob of students biking to class. In my apartment, the curtains are my sheer shield. But on campus, there is no such barrier, nothing to protect me from being seen.
I didn’t always fear existing on campus or leaving the safety of my apartment. There was a time when I enjoyed picking out an outfit every morning, donning my headphones, and strutting off to my next class, chin lifted, giving people something to look at. But after taking a quarter off last year and returning with a mobility aid — i.e., visibly disabled — my experience navigating UCSB’s campus took a turn. I started to take what I call the “Disabled Bus” to class. The University calls it the “Mobility Transportation Program,” but my nickname felt more apt for the university-provided golf carts and drivers that shuttle us to class. And by “us” I mean myself and maybe one other regular, joined by a rotating cast of students with ankle and knee injuries.
The “Disabled Bus” and I had a tumultuous relationship. It’s a great service, in theory, but in practice, it gets you to class on time about 40% of the time. The rest? You’re either 15 minutes late, 45 minutes early, or forgotten altogether. A dismal system for someone like me, who craves predictability, clear communication, and structure thanks to my neurodivergent nature. Not to mention the “Disabled Bus” honks its way through our overpopulated campus, threatening to further disable our student body. As the golf cart makes its slow, honking trek through the hordes of walking and biking students, they often ogle and gawk, making our mode of transportation feel less like a metal cart and more like an exhibit. And suddenly, I’m on display, separated by an invisible glass wall with no sheer curtains to hide behind.
This quarter though, I broke up with the “Disabled Bus”. I bought a parking pass instead. But even with my Subaru, Scottina, I still dread going to class. The moment I step out of the safety of Scottina’s doors into the masses of UCSB students, I’m that clumsy giant again — squeezing into miniature lecture hall seats, scooching between too-tight desks, and attracting those familiar double-takes
UCSB is supposed to be a progressive, diverse campus. And coming from the white-bread, preppy Connecticut town I grew up in, UCSB initially felt like a far-left utopia. After four years though, that utopia loses its shine, and it turns out it’s just another massive institution with ingrained and accepted norms for how people are expected to look, act, and move. Using a mobility aid doesn’t fit those norms, nor does wearing an N-95 to class (though if you heard the cacophony of coughing in my lectures, you’d understand). This isn’t just internalized ableism I’m projecting onto my environment either — my first week of classes this quarter demonstrated these norms with a scary clarity.
I found myself in three scenarios. Scenario one: I’m in a class of 60 students crammed into a classroom meant for 30 for a three-hour lecture. Feels like a pretty big fuck you to my immuno-compromised AuDHD ass. At one point, I simply get up and leave — it's impossible for me to sit still for that long, and I'm getting increasingly more anxious about the boy coughing up a storm directly to my right. Scenario two: I'm in a smaller class section. My TA — who is getting a PhD in education — immediately asks us to do an activity requiring us to stand and walk around the classroom for 45 minutes. An activity that assumes I have a body capable of such things. And if I don't? Clearly they don’t teach that in education school. Scenario three: my English professor (who I imagine is definitely on some hard drugs due to the sheer amount of far-off tangents he weaves into our lectures) is taking attendance on the first day of class. With glasses on, he peers down at the attendance sheet like it’s some sort of secret code. He proceeds to tell the entire class that it’s his first day of wearing reading glasses and they really help. Cue his first tangent, explaining, “this is what happens when you get older. Your body starts to break down, decay, and you need the help of things like these glasses.” Welp, feels pretty shitty declaring that to a 21-year-old whose body has already started that type of process.
Scenarios like these, and countless others, leave me feeling unsafe at school. Frankly, around a lot of people my age — especially in a town where it seems like everyone is drinking some sort of happy-juice that I don’t have access to. I’ve noticed myself falling back into old habits I usually reserve for my hometown: dressing more femme and forgoing my binders in order to cling to some semblance of safety. But even that doesn’t help — I just end up in a dissociative-anxious state, convinced that if anyone looked directly into my eyes they would immediately know that I’m freaking the fuck out. And I’m just so exhausted. Of hiding. Of the act. Of straining to keep my chin up and feeling like I need the protection of sheer curtains to feel safe in the world.
Growing up in Connecticut, just 45 minutes away from New York, I felt constantly called to it. And when I was around 14 and old enough to take the train there on my own, I started to understand the nature of that calling. I don’t think I could articulate it at the time, but New York felt like a sigh of relief. Each time I got off the platform at Grand Central, it felt just a bit easier to take up space than when I stepped on the train in the first place. As I grew older, I came to understand how I had to shroud and suppress my queerness, my transness, my aloof nature in my hometown, and when I went into the
New York felt too close to home when it came time to apply to colleges, so California felt like the next-best alternative. But it’s been four years here and my body yearns for the smell of fall, the thick air before it rains, and the silhouette of a barren tree in November. I want to feel that sigh of relief again. And for the second time in my short life, I hear New York calling.
I don’t think it would be a less overwhelming place to be, sensory-wise. In fact, I’m quite certain it wouldn’t be. But I know that there, I would never feel like I’m in an exhibit. I imagine myself wearing what I want (black boots, baggy jeans, my binder with a soft button down), moving how I want (with my forearm crutch in a disjointed, beautiful clumsy manner), and looking where I want (straight ahead, down, anything that shields me from any sort of direct eye contact), and no one giving me a second glance. I imagine everyone in their own world, on their own mission, connected by proximity itself.
Maybe that sounds isolating to some. Maybe my memory deceives me. Maybe I’m romanticizing it. But I can’t stop thinking about how much less exhausted I could be if I could just blend in for once, just be another person in the crowd, not having to hide behind gauzy curtains.
It’s not just that though. In New York, I see people like me — walking down the street, sprawling on the grass of a public park, in niche coffee shops that sell $10 bagels. Queer, trans, and disabled people simply existing. Not heroes, not mentors, not “brave”, just living their lives in a buzzing metropolis. I imagine sensing their sheer presence and proximity, and immediately, feeling less alone.
But maybe I’m just not looking hard enough where I am — a likely symptom of spending most of my time behind curtains. For now, I’ll continue going to class, to meetings, to Target, and maybe I’ll even try growling at the next person who does a double take at my sheer existence. I’ll continue staring through my window, imagining a bustling New York City street, with adrienne maree brown's words echoing in my mind.
Homesickness
September, 2024
For as long as I can remember, I’ve missed home.
Cut to me at 10 years old. It’s my first year at summer camp and I’m bawling my eyes out on the top bunk of a rickety metal bunk bed, a chorus of cicadas failing to drown out my wails. Somehow, between ten and eleven, I willed myself to forget those emotional outbursts, and I found myself at camp again the next summer. This time letting tears silently flow out of my cheeks as I paddled a canoe. I discovered that if I sat in the front and paddled really hard, the person behind me wouldn’t notice my shoulders moving up and down with each sob; my tears just blended in with the water.
Those tears flowed as I indulged in the fantasy of “home”. I would imagine myself in my bed, my mom holding me close, quelling my anxieties with the reassuring words, “Everything will be okay.” I envisioned us dancing while she cooked family dinners, laughter filling the kitchen as my dad recounted tales about growing up on a farm. In this imagined home, we were a happy family – supportive, unconditionally loving, and honest.
At twelve, I attended camp for four weeks, punctuated by a parent’s visiting day. Again, I cried in bunk beds, canoes, and bathrooms, questioning why I subjected myself to this yearly ritual. When my parents showed up for visiting day, I cried tears of joy while I hugged them both (my brother went to the same camp, so he was already there). But after just five minutes together, I barely recognized them. They didn’t match the parents I had missed in my head. My mom’s doting affection was overshadowed by her constant anticipation of my father’s needs and annoyances, and my dad’s silly stories gave way to cutting and hurtful remarks on almost everything my brother or I did. By the end of the day, I wanted them gone. I was confused. If these were my parents, who the hell was I missing for the past couple weeks?
Eventually I stopped going to summer camp, and the fantasy of my home-life faded amidst the sharp-edged reality of my family’s dynamic. My next significant experience away from home was college. At seventeen, I was desperate to get as far away from my childhood home as humanly possible. I would make a new home – one where I didn’t have to press my ear to the floor to monitor my parent’s arguments, where my brother’s dark cloud of depression didn’t seep under his locked door, where my mom didn’t raise her voice in a panic over questions best left unasked, where my dad didn’t aggressively berate her for dinner plates not being warm enough. I was ecstatic when I got accepted into UCSB, a dreamy school in Santa Barbara, California – literally as far away as I could get while staying in the U.S.
Today, as I enter my fourth year at UCSB, much has changed since I was seventeen and applying to college. My body, for starters – my disability manifested within weeks of arriving at college. My friendships – only two people from high school remain in my life, while my social circle has been a rotating cast of characters over the past three years. My gender – while I never really felt like a girl, I finally started using they/them pronouns and presenting authentically during my first year at college. Where I live – I’ve moved three times since my freshman year. My mental health – an unpleasant roller coaster of panic attacks, deep depressions, and the process of accepting my neurodivergence. I could go on for a while, but I’ll spare you.
What never changes, though, is this nagging feeling of homesickness, reminiscent of those summers at camp. I miss things that exist: my room with a lock on it, food in the fridge downstairs, the sound of my mom emptying the dishwasher in the early morning, and the soft fur of my dog. But I also miss things that don’t exist: my mom’s undivided attention, unburdened conversations with my brother, encouragement from my father, an overall feeling of safety.
Four years of college also means four years of traveling home for occasional breaks or summer holidays. Each visit feels like parent’s visiting day all over again: I’m initially ecstatic until I realize I constructed the home I’d been missing in my head, and this one doesn’t match up. The fantasy shatters. Despite all the changes I’ve undergone and initiated in California, I return to the same stagnant, silent state of home—a place where I don’t feel safe, where I float around in a dissociated haze, hypervigilant and jumping at the slightest sound.
I inevitably head back to school, often desperate to escape, only to rebuild the fantasy once more. I know intuitively that the home I imagine doesn’t exist, yet I miss it anyway. It offers a refuge from my dismal thoughts, my breaking body, my all-encompassing existential fear, the deep loneliness I sometimes feel in this college town filled with smiling, able-bodied, enthusiastic youth, from whom I feel profoundly disconnected.
But if this home I miss is a fantasy, if this town I inhabit only brings me isolation and anxiety, where do I belong? Where is home?
To answer these questions – or at least convince myself an answer exists – I’ve begun to imagine a special third place. Not here in this college town, nor in my childhood home, but somewhere else entirely. A place I feel safe, a place that holds me. I obsessively watch YouTube videos of tiny homes and apartment decor (nevertoosmall is my favorite channel), scour Zillow for the cheapest apartments in Brooklyn, look at adoptable cats, and try to envision a life for myself after I graduate and leave this small town. Maybe then I’ll finally find that elusive home.
Yet I worry. What if I’m the problem? What if I move to Brooklyn, land the job of my dreams, attend figure drawing every Wednesday night, adopt a snuggly orange cat, and still feel that nagging emptiness? That longing for the home, the family, that never truly existed in the first place.
Hometown Hero
August, 2024
[ image description: a colorful sketchbook spread. On the top of the left page two individuals sit on a park bench at night, and on the bottom is a checkered table with a hand holding a bagel, pointing to a map of “suburbia”. On the top right page is an individual lounging on top of a suburban-style house. A speech-bubble from their mouth reads,”hometown hero". On the bottom right is a road leading from the bottom of the house to the bottom of the pages and the words “Get Going, Get gone” are overlaid over a cityscape and sunset. ]
Every time I travel back to my hometown, I’m reminded of how this place made me so small. How I used to bend over backwards to present and act in a way that would bring me safety and security. In the four years I’ve spent away from there, I’ve been learning how to occupy my true form, my most authentic way of being.
But in those brief moments when I travel back, when I step in the bagel store to get that scrumptious, pillowy, delectable cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, the stares I’m met with remind me of why I made myself so small, so palatable, for so many years. God forbid I order a bagel in smalltown Connecticut whilst looking gender variant and disabled!
On the other side of the coin though, are the hometown heroes – I know we all have them. In my town they usually take the form of the football or lacrosse team star, they go to college just a couple hours away to come home on the weekends, they’ll probably work in New York until they find a spouse, and they’ll promptly move back to our town to raise their alarmingly white, anglo-european family.
I have this fantasy of grabbing them by the hem of their vineyard vines or Lululemon top and asking them how they do it. Of course they’ll be closeted in some way and craving the escape that I embody. And I’ll seduce them with not only my unbridled queerness, but with the idea of escape, of living authentically, instead of the cookie cutter mold expected of them. So, I obviously wrote a poem about it:
oh hometown hero
how do you do it?
in this maze of suburbia
do you hold the map through it?
you keep things so light
with memories so dark
you’re a late august sunset
a joint in the park
oh hometown hero
do you crave escape?
do you tow the line?
do you lie in wait?
do their stares ever shake you?
do you always feel safe?
do you notice us outcasts?
or will you take up our space?
oh hometown hero
i see what you hide
in your eyes are the ghosts
the forgotten, the divide
of those who belong
and those who will flee
what separates us?
you
and me
oh hometown hero
meet me at night
tell me what it got you
the banality, this life
kiss my queer lips
taste the paths not taken
i hope it’s worth it, hero
the lies and the aching
cookie cutter houses
and manicured lawns
but each road’s a way out
get going, get gone
My Big Blue Fuzzy Blanket
July, 2024
Last night, as I lay in that limbo, waiting for sleep to wrap its fingers around my brain and whisk me away into an unsettling dream featuring all of my exes, my thoughts had ulterior motives. First of all, the DJ in my mind decided to press play on Remi Wolf’s Kangaroo (stream Big Ideas — it slaps), but mostly, I couldn’t stop thinking about my big blue fuzzy blanket that I had snuggled up to my chin in my typical sleeping position. How it’s still one of my sleepy-time essentials at almost a decade old, how it came into my life, and all the moments – the joyous, the depressing, the terrifying, the relieving – that it’s witnessed over the years.
In a society so preoccupied with the pressure to consume, to buy, to keep up with trends, where something new could be on its way to you with the simple click of a button, we are constantly inundated with objects. Addicted to that rush of dopamine that accompanies the package at the front door. As someone who clinically struggles to regulate my dopamine — boy, do I know that rush. Just last week, I pressed the purchase button on Depop so hastily that I accidentally sent the package to my traumatic old house and roommates. Thankfully, I had a friend snatch it off the doorstep, but it did feel like the universe was yelling at me, “WAS THIS NEW OBJECT WORTH IT?”
As my mobility has decreased over the past year and my spoons have dwindled, I’ve started to spend a lot more time at home and am often asking myself that same question. Like if I really need that fourth Trader Joe’s tote bag, the Converse I wore once for Pride three years ago, or if I’m ever going to use the 20-pound weighted blanket under my bed if I throw out my shoulder every time I try to lift it. Because after a certain number of days glued to my bed with a migraine or on the couch icing a sprained joint, I start to ponder each object I have chosen to surround myself with. I usually find myself using my next OCD x ADHD hyperfixation craze to round these forgotten objects into piles and trash bags, eventually rehoming them through my friends or my local thrift store.
The more clutter and forgotten objects I purge from my space, the more I realize how intimate a relationship I have with the ones left, how they each tell a story. It could be a story I just entered, like with my thrifted bookcase, or a story I’m deeply intertwined with, like my big blue fuzzy blanket.
And in this slow-moving chapter of my life, I’m often parked on my couch or bed watching YouTube. Recently, I’ve found myself drawn to videos about living in tiny homes or vans, celebrities doing “what’s in my bag” interviews, or GQ’s “10 essential items.” It’s not so much that I’m intrigued by the objects themselves, but what they show about a person and their values. This is what consumerism enshrouds. The stories and intimate ties behind why we carry around some items and not others, the deep self-questioning and reflection that come with prioritizing certain objects when living in a smaller space.
Some recent favorites include Charli XCX keeping a banana in her bag in case she gets hungry, though it always inevitably ends up rotting; Emma Roberts keeping a blanket in her tote, which she affectionately refers to as an “anxiety-rag”; Halle Bailey keeping a adorable Black plush mermaid keychain on her keys; and Julia Fox carrying around an extra vape in her cunty handbag in case hers dies (we love a woman whose prepared). Of course, there’s the element of these individuals being celebrities, and the question arises: why do we even care what they are carrying around in their designer handbags? Which, yes, I agree with, but it’s also entertaining as hell. Something as simple as sharing what items you carry around on a daily basis is a reminder of our shared humanity. I think a lot of us can feel seen by an “anxiety rag.” It’s a small reminder that we’re not alone on this fear-inducing planet.
I love looking around my apartment at the stories that surround me. The monstera plant I got in a strange Facebook Marketplace parking lot exchange two years ago, growing alongside me and nearly doubling in size in the past year (I call him Big Guy); the vinyl records I stole from my dad’s collection that were likely collecting dust in the attic for the past 20 years (now they can collect dust with me); the ceramic ashtray with a joint precariously balancing on it, lovingly stolen by my mother from an incredibly fancy restaurant; and of course, my big blue fuzzy blanket.
It came into my life almost 10 years ago. I was 12 and had just returned from multiple extended stays at the hospital. I remember going to see my best friend for the first time after being back and neither of us having the words to talk about my absence. I think it was her mom’s idea to present me with the blanket as a welcome-home gift, something to say, “We’re happy you’re back. Here is something to keep you cozy and cared for as you settle back into life.” It was so simple, but it made me feel safe at a time when I wasn’t inclined to feel that way. And the blanket’s been on my bed ever since. Witnessing the tossing and turning of a confused middle schooler, soaking up my tears as a closeted high schooler, and likely mocking my performance of cisgendered heterosexuality it often endured. I even dragged it across the country to my college dorm room and the apartments that followed, wrapping it around me during panic attacks and depressive streamings of Les Misérables, or passing out on top of it after a long day of trying to exist as a disabled college student in an aggressively able institution. As exhausting as living can be, when I look at my big blue fuzzy blanket, I am reminded of all those stories, my strength of survival, and that I deserve comfort and care in the midst of all this chaos. Unfortunately, it’s too big to fit into a bag, but if GQ ever asks me to do my 10 essential items… maybe I would bring it ;).
But like my blanket, I want to be intentional with the objects I surround myself with. I want them to hold a story. It doesn’t always have to be one of love or perseverance; it could be a story of loss, grief, or even failure. It just brings me joy to look around at a blanket, a plant, or an ashtray and think of and feel the stories they hold and the lessons they teach. You cannot buy that shit on Depop.
Crip Speed
June, 2024
On a November day in the 6th grade, Mr. Childs, my English teacher, pulled me aside after class. He asked if I was ok, told me he could tell how I carried myself with my head up and chin lifted, but he also noticed that I wasn’t quite fitting in at my new school and wondered if I wanted to talk about it. He was correct to be concerned, although I don’t remember taking him up on his offer. I do, however, remember feeling incredibly seen. Not because he noticed my sullen demeanor or lonely experience, but because he noticed the lift in my chin.
This was a practiced art, developed over the year prior to combat the alien feeling of being in a body infiltrated by puberty and feeling powerless within my family dynamic. My classmates would poke fun at my khaki shorts compared to the skirts of most girls in my class, and the way I moved through the school hallways and beyond — with my eyes staring ahead and chin pointing forward — became my armor and shield.
This armor became all the more urgent in high school, reinforced by layers of foundation, mascara, and a speedy Manhattan-walk I picked up from my parents. For years I depended on this hasty sashay, with eyes aware of everything yet looking at nothing in particular. I feared that if someone saw a crack in this armor, they would see the terrified child underneath.
Of course, a chink in my shield occurred when I felt I required it the most—the first few days of college on the other side of the country. It took the form of a devastating left ankle sprain, the culprit being stairs (to this day, they remain one of my biggest threats). That year, the injury and pain in my ankle started to move throughout my body, claiming my shoulders, my back, my wrists, knees, toes, and hips. I fought to ignore that ache, limping away from it until it would force me to listen through another injury or the cracks and pops of my joints.
It would be almost 2 years of calculating steps, aggravating injuries, and blaming myself and my body before the pain forced me to take time off school and put every ounce of my energy into finding answers for the discomfort I was in. I was exhausted from bracing myself for each step, fearing a wobble would turn into a displaced joint or a sprain. I felt that there had to be a better way.
The better way came in the form of a metallic purple cane, ordered in secret during those months away from school. I stored it away in my closet, only daring to practice hobbling around on it until I knew I had the house to myself. Those months at home stretched uncomfortably, but as I watched the Northeast winter tentatively shift into Spring, something shifted in me too. I was stepping into my identity as a disabled person.
One weekend, when I was home alone, I courageously decided to place my cane by the door — to see if my notoriously don’t-ask-don’t-tell family would say anything about it. The only family member who brought it up was my mom, her tone echoing the time she found a water bottle filled with vodka in my closet during the ninth grade — like it was some sort of contraband. With time, I think she was able to see how much help a mobility aid provides me, but we still haven't really talked about it since. To my physical therapist Katie though, my cane was just another Tuesday, and she happily corrected how I held it, watching me stagger back and forth, and gave me the confidence to take my cane into the real world.
Walking with my cane, I’m acutely aware of each step I take: the length in my gait, potential cracks in my path, and coordinating my cane-wielding arm to join in this slow dance. I danced this awkward, clunky, crip dance all the way back to college in California. I loved how my cane allowed me to semi-function without getting injured every other day, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared of moving through college as a 21-year-old with a mobility aid.
Being a young person with a disability is a grieving-process. I grieve when I look out my apartment window, watching kids my age bound down their steps to go meet their friends and the troves of students biking to and from class. I grieve being able to move through campus unnoticed as I’m inundated with stares from the mobility transportation golf cart – or as I like to call it, the disabled bus. I grieve the split-second decision to bike to the beach on a whim, without having to negotiate parking, rickety wooden steps, or genuinely fight for my life while walking on sand. I grieve a time when I didn’t intimately know the 15 steps that it takes me to descend the stairs from my second-floor apartment. I grieve the gatherings I’ll never have the energy for, or when I could say yes to a hangout without first understanding the layout of the destination.
But it’s not all grief. In fact, negotiating how to make life work with my disabled bodymind has brought me radical joy. Specifically, the joy of crip speed. The joy of spotting the small flower growing between the cracks in the pavement and the incredible people watching and eavesdropping I partake in as I arrive places earlier to negotiate their accessibility. I find joy in the time it takes for my tea to cool down, and how good that sip tastes coupled with my celebratory ice cream sandwich — simply for making it through a day within a system that wasn’t built for me. Joy is sprinkled across each wall in my apartment – the walls I’ve spent hours taping any and all postcards, notes, posters, and pictures to that make me smile as I’ve begun to spend more and more time at home. The home where I can fully unmask, silently ice my aching limbs, and not apologize for any of the space I take up. Joy lives in the hour I take for myself in bed before I go to sleep – to journal, read, watch youtube, orgasm, cry, or sometimes both. I find tremendous joy listening to other disabled voices and stories as I wash the dishes I let pile up in the sink for three days while I was having a flare up, the stories continuously reminding me that I’m not alone, and to celebrate the sacred nuance of this slow existence.
I can no longer rely on the armor I once did. I’ve long since retired the shield of assured anonymity in my lifted chin and the hasty walk that would help me perform a confident conformity. Those are actions I simply cannot afford. Besides, the click of my cane on the floor announces me before I even show face in a given scenario, and my chin often remains glued to my chest as I walk, scanning my path for potential obstacles for my feet or cane. As terrifying as it was to lay this armor down, I’ve never felt more myself. Don’t get me wrong, some days I still feel like I need it, deeply uncomfortable in my skin and like I can’t handle one more prolonged glance. But I don’t have that luxury anymore. So I grab my cane like I would my keys as I exit my apartment and prepare to descend the 15 steps to ground level. And somehow, in between the grief and joy and stares and cracks in the sidewalk, I’m learning to love myself… at crip speed.
Why: I’m Scared But I’m Here
April, 2024
TW: Ableism, Institutionalization, Blood, Mental Illness
I guess I want to start off here by saying that I’m scared.
I’m not comfortable with my thoughts laid bare on this page. Where I’m not writing for simply writing sake, like the sprawling pages of my journals, but writing to say something. To reach out a hand in what can feel like a terrifying, violent, mystifying, beautiful cluster-fuck of a world and say, “Hey! I’m here too!”
I’m scared.
There are voices that swirl within my skull, that tell me there is no point, that I don’t deserve to be heard, that no matter how loud I scream and punch and kick and cry, no one is listening.
I don’t think those are innate thoughts or feelings, but learned ones.
I grew up in a household that wouldn’t acknowledge or address a need, confront a problem, or have a difficult conversation until the fire alarm is blaring, 911 has been dialed, or someone is dying. So as a young neurodivergent, mentally-ill child, I learned that it was easier to pretend my needs and my truths simply didn’t exist. Plus, it was exhausting to die, and nothing is more embarrassing than your parents calling 911 on you.
I’m scared.
By 13 I was so fucking exhausted of clawing for a sliver of agency over my adolescent body and mind—a body and mind that did nothing but confuse and betray me. If tantrums and screams and hospital beds and blood wouldn’t get my parents to listen to me, to see me, I might as well try to be a different person. One whose desires for communication and predictable systems, massive feelings, queerness, curiosity, deep fear, and creativity were buried beneath a Victoria's Secret pushup bra, clumpy mascara, and brassy highlights.
My friends laugh when they catch a glimpse of my drivers license or my student ID, with my 17-year-old self staring blankly out of the plastic card. I laugh along because it’s easier. I see the humor in juxtaposing the long blond hair to my chopped brown, the cakey makeup-clad face to mine peppered with metal piercings. But I wish I could dive through the plastic, take my own hand, and tell myself that hiding will hurt me ever more. I wonder if 17-year-old me would let that hand go, balking at my purple cane, my baggy jeans, and the lovely soft bits of skin that spill over the waistband.
I’m scared.
People talk about finding themselves like they must travel vast distances, rip up floorboards, and shout their name from rooftops. I didn’t have that experience. The needs and desires and messiness and truth that I buried deep in the crevasses of my being started to bubble over. They would ooze out during early mornings in my dorm room, when I would wake up gulping for air, wondering why my dorm felt like the familiar corridors of a hospital, questioning what persona I would adopt to make friends that day, and thinking about how the fuck I would get out of bed. They would trickle down my cheeks as I tried desperately to get my loving but depressed partner to open up to me, remembering those years of my adolescence I spent banging on my brother's door, begging him to let me in. They would seep out during nights spent alone in my room spreading paint across a canvas, relishing in the simple joy of creating for my own enjoyment.
People talk about finding themselves as a sudden revelation, triumphantly completing the puzzle of their long-lost personhood with courage and ease. I didn’t have that experience either. My gut wrenching, sticky, oozing, delightful, and chaotic puzzle pieces of memories and feelings don’t magically complete the bodymind I occupy today. I’ve spent long and lonely hours staring at these pieces, conversing with them, cooking for them, writing with them, and bringing them with me to therapy. And I’m still so incredibly perplexed, knowing I can’t be the only one who feels this way, and wondering why the hell aren’t we talking about it. I’m scared of the jagged jigsaw I am, with mismatched pieces and whole chunks of puzzle missing.
I’m scared.
As I type this at 21, I am only now finding my footing after what has felt like the most terrifying, impossible, and isolating two and a half years of my life. A lot happened in that timespan, but stepping into my identity as a disabled individual is really the catalyst for my showing up on this page.
I’ve always been disabled. Turns out my specific desires for communication and systems and colossal feelings and confusion that I spent 6 years of my life burying beneath brassy blonde highlights were autism and ADHD. And it turns out the chronic injuries and pain I have been experiencing for the past 3 years aren’t just “growing pains”—as I’ve heard from many doctors, family, and friends— but a connective tissue disorder.
It’s been quite a painful and lonely realization that if I want to survive, I cannot continue to hide myself, my access needs, and my desires. So on my quest for survival, I learned that I need to express, to create, to write, to release—it helps me make sense of this agonizing, pointless, yet delicately beautiful human experience, it keeps me from collapsing under the sheer fear of waking up in the morning, and it allows me to reach a hand out into this void of existence and say, “Is anyone else having this really fucked up feeling?”
And maybe someone is.
I’m scared, but I’m here. Somehow.
As I reach my hand out through these typed words strung together, I am still the same 4 year old throwing a tantrum in a taxi cab, I am the 12 year old crying in a hospital gown, I am the 17 year old staring blankly though my student ID, and I carry this ugly unfinished puzzle within me, ready to share it with the world.