Your Dick Didn’t Change Me.

Oh go on, tell me. Explain to me what I meant when I wrote those words. See, without you to explain them, how would I ever know I was writing about love or death or sex or anything in between. See, it all started when I was a child and a man grabbed my knee to inform me I was pretty, rubbing it like he was cleaning a stain out the bathtub and slyly said, “Just wait till you grow up.” It continued when I saw my first dick in person and my young mouth proclaimed “well you got the short end of the stick, that shit’s ugly” and I was called a whore. It progressed when I posted my first self portraits, the ones I agonized over before sitting down and writing a list of the all the reasons I should be nude on the internet. It continued when I clapped back and told a man he had no idea how to talk to women and he replied “I was raised by them.”

Your dick didn’t change me when I let a man in, let him know it was ok to explore. Girls are told that losing your virginity is a big deal, that it changes you fundamentally which is why virgins always get a higher price. I got a bigger rush getting kicked out of all you can eat buffets- three in my wild career. Maybe it’s because I recognized I was the same girl prior to your penis that I was immediately after. That I still understood the words I wrote even when you tried to explain them back to me. I didn’t know what I was talking about. Clearly.

Your dick didn’t change me when you violated my trust and took control the last night I ever got black out drunk. I flew out the door of your dorm and in through a friend’s window at 5am, shaking and crying. Once the tears ended, I’m the one that changed me. To give you the satisfaction of that pleasure is not in my power. It is in my power to keep control of what’s mine, of the words that drip from my mouth and the sneers that form on my lips. To continue giving myself power, knowing that between my legs I hold the power of life and death.

So please, tell me again what I mean; cause I’m serious when I say your dick didn’t change me.

On the Subject of Nudity (2012)

I’ve decided to make this post to clarify a couple of things and to be able to simply reference it when this subject comes up again in the future. Recently I have had a lot of people asking me about my decision to photograph myself in the nude and my thoughts on how other people perceive this action. I’ve talked a bit about this before but I wanted to take the time to put my thoughts out there.

First and foremost, I see nothing wrong with nudity. We were born naked, we shower naked, we have sex (for the most part) naked. Its a part of life. This being said, I was definitely not comfortable with my body growing up. I was hyper aware of my body coming from a dance and gymnastics background, but I was never the body type that lured people in. I was limbs and sinew flying all over the place in a slightly graceful fashion. The girls everyone wanted were the ones who had curves and boobs and could purse their lips and stop your heart. When I ran track, I didn’t develop curves, I developed 20 lbs of muscle, which is kind of frightening to see on a 5'9" girl coming at you at full tilt.

Even in college I wasn’t directly comfortable with my skin. Entering in to college I had a major accident that placed metal in my left femur, hip, and knee. When you go to a foreign place on crutches and a cane, most people don’t stop and think, “Oh that limby girl is hot,” they think (and I quote), “What does that girl think she’s pimp or something?” It took me years of dancing at shows and putting my body through the ringer before I finally looked down and said, “Oh hey, I like you, you’re kind of nice and have fun little freckles in interesting places. Let’s be friends.” Having so much physical and neurological trauma, I find it natural to want to see what I am capable of doing, of pushing myself in any way possible to get myself out there and across to people.

For me, photographing myself in the nude has nothing to do with sexuality or desire or anything but my own ability to look at myself and see something beautiful. When I first started conducting my series of self portraits, I quickly realized that I didn’t like the way clothing worked into what I was trying to convey. A lot of the time it seemed to tie me down to a particular period in time and I wasn’t particularly interested in exploring the idea of costume. Removing my clothing and leaving it to the wayside allowed me to open up myself and start to process my own emotions. I could see the lines and curves (the small ones that make me happy because only I seem to know their there) and say to myself “this is my body, this is what is moving me from point A to B, sometimes with trouble, but always together.”

And I think that at 23 I can fully make my own decisions about how I would like to convey my ideas and emotions photographically. The body is not always pornographic. It is a temple, a sacred space of emotion and strength and power, and while I understand not everyone is going to look at a nude body and see those exact thoughts, I can’t help but believe that there are others out there who simply see the beauty in it.

October 22, 2014

I’m happy for the person you’ve become. For the road you walked was long and hard, for the people you hurt were patient and kind, but your paths diverged and the past and those people are behind you.

I no longer hold animosity towards those who hurt me, they have to live with their choices in the same way I live with mine. What is the good of holding on to anger? It only leads to problems and sickness. I am not a self appointed martyr. There is no cross behind my back.

I no longer wish to bring that anger into my life, nor do I wish to spread it by verbally getting things off my chest. In doing so I may further hurt those who hurt me and one bad deed (or thousands) doesn’t need to continue on.

I no longer dream of things that could happen but focus on making them happen in the present. I leave my dreams to be messages, carefully decoded with time, without worrying about what they mean for the future. There really is no future, just an illusion created to keep us away from the now.

I no longer share my plans; the secrecy of the act holds more promise than the winds of words. If they come true, then I will be happy, and if they don’t come to fruition, I will still be happy.

I accept the sadness and the darkness of my mind. I welcome them like old friends, with open arms and open heart. I know they come from time to time and I know they need a release in order to become a light again.

I accept the pain that my body holds. Years of scars twisting inside and outside for others to see. They mark the paths I have chosen, the moments of love and fear. They do not hold dominion over the present; instead they are simply visual points of interest along the road of life.

I accept the beauty that my body creates, the sink of the hips, the limp in my leg. I accept the lines, the muscle, the forms. The way it curls into and around itself in it’s own dance. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say dance like no one is watching. Move your body like it is your lover, slow and fast, out of tempo and to the beat. Treat is like you want to, love it fiercely like it may be gone tomorrow.

Release.

Sometimes (2014)

Sometimes I think of the people I used to know, I wonder if they finally found the happiness they were always chasing. I wonder if they finally gave up the negativity at the same time I found my voice, if they are no longer chasing their tails, and if they remember any of the good times we had. I wonder if the ones who just faded away remember when we used to laugh and cry. If they remember the songs we would sing together driving down back roads on our way to adventure. I think of their faces and no longer feel extremes: extreme anger, extreme joy. I just think of their faces and let them go. I’m sure they don’t think of me and if they do, I hope they recognize the impact they had on my life, the lessons they taught me in trust, denial, love, joy, and learning to not be walked all over. Just because someone is no longer a part of your life, doesn’t mean they weren’t supposed to be at one point in time. It just means that your paths diverged and moved forward in different rhythms.

Sometimes I think of the things I used to do, the good and the bad, and wonder if I could survive doing them all over again. I think back to the times I was angry. The summer of 2008 when everything felt like I was choking and wanting to lash out. When I punched someone I worked with because they wouldn’t back off me and I didn’t know how else to react. When I felt like shit because I hit them and realized I had that power within me to hurt if pushed too far. I think of 2012-2013 when I was angry I allowed myself to be a doormat for not one, but three women of the same mold.

I think back to when I last saw my father. He was dying in a hospital room with his family around him. I watched him release his last breath, waiting two full minutes hoping he was just experiencing sleep apnea again and would pull air in. Staring, waiting, until my sister stopped her story and told us it was done. I think back to when I sat in his studio on Phillips Road. The big easel and the big window. Watching the 10th anniversary of Les Mis and acting out all the parts. Drawing on bits of paper and how everything was always brilliant in his eyes.

I think back to when I followed the Disco Biscuits on tour and sat high in the light shows dancing out everything in my body hoping I wouldn’t feel empty and still physically broken in the morning. Those nights lasted forever; the insides of hotel rooms were always clouded with sweat and the sound of nitrous tanks blowing up balloons. The rides across the country with the kids I toured with; the scenes flying by and the surprise when I would bust out to some random rap song.

I think of all the ways I have come so far from the scrawny kid hiding in books, from the athlete who won the awards, from the college kid making it up as I went along. I still make it up, only now I take the lessons I’ve learned and try to apply them to the present.

I think of the people I used to love. Of the way their hands fit with mine and would hold me when I had a shaking fit. I think of my mother, always trying her best and rarely having someone tell her how goddamn powerful, beautiful, and inspirational she is.

I think of the past and throw it into the wind. I think of the future and let the waves wash over it. I think of the now.

Sometimes

Sometimes I think of the people I used to know, I wonder if they finally found the happiness they were always chasing. I wonder if they finally gave up the negativity at the same time I found my voice, if they are no longer chasing their tails, and if they remember any of the good times we had. I wonder if the ones who just faded away remember when we used to laugh and cry. If they remember the songs we would sing together driving down back roads on our way to adventure. I think of their faces and no longer feel extremes: extreme anger, extreme joy. I just think of their faces and let them go. I’m sure they don’t think of me and if they do, I hope they recognize the impact they had on my life, the lessons they taught me in trust, denial, love, joy, and learning to not be walked all over. Just because someone is no longer a part of your life, doesn’t mean they weren’t supposed to be at one point in time. It just means that your paths diverged and moved forward in different rhythms.

Sometimes I think of the things I used to do, the good and the bad, and wonder if I could survive doing them all over again. I think back to the times I was angry. The summer of 2008 when everything felt like I was choking and wanting to lash out. When I punched someone I worked with because they wouldn’t back off me and I didn’t know how else to react. When I felt like shit because I hit them and realized I had that power within me to hurt if pushed too far. I think of 2012-2013 when I was angry I allowed myself to be a doormat for not one, but three women of the same mold.

I think back to when I last saw my father. He was dying in a hospital room with his family around him. I watched him release his last breath, waiting two full minutes hoping he was just experiencing sleep apnea again and would pull air in. Staring, waiting, until my sister stopped her story and told us it was done. I think back to when I sat in his studio on Phillips Road. The big easel and the big window. Watching the 10th anniversary of Les Mis and acting out all the parts. Drawing on bits of paper and how everything was always brilliant in his eyes.

I think back to when I followed the Disco Biscuits on tour and sat high in the light shows dancing out everything in my body hoping I wouldn’t feel empty and still physically broken in the morning. Those nights lasted forever; the insides of hotel rooms were always clouded with sweat and the sound of nitrous tanks blowing up balloons. The rides across the country with the kids I toured with; the scenes flying by and the surprise when I would bust out to some random rap song.

I think of all the ways I have come so far from the scrawny kid hiding in books, from the athlete who won the awards, from the college kid making it up as I went along. I still make it up, only now I take the lessons I’ve learned and try to apply them to the present.

I think of the people I used to love. Of the way their hands fit with mine and would hold me when I had a shaking fit. I think of my mother, always trying her best and rarely having someone tell her how goddamn powerful, beautiful, and inspirational she is.

I think of the past and throw it into the wind. I think of the future and let the waves wash over it. I think of the now.

The Journey

Sometimes you are at the start of a journey. You’re packed, you have enough snacks to see you through a couple days (or hours…let’s be real, I eat a lot), your mind is ready for whatever will come. There is a fluttery feeling in your stomach and your lips start to draw up at the sides. You’re sitting at the start of a journey and suddenly - you freeze. Can’t move. You feel a little panic as the words “What the fuck am I doing?” slowly leave your mouth.

The only thing you can do at that point is take a breath and pick a course. Most people view life as a linear event. You go from point A to point B to C and on and on and on, from birth to death. The truth is no course in life is linear. Sometimes you start at point A, jump to point K, loop back around to C, realize that you forgot something at B, and continue forward.

Sometimes the things you picked up years ago as a hobby are what you are supposed to do in the present, only you are too self conscious or pig headed to realize it. You think you are only meant to do this Thing because you are good at it and you think its where your path lies. Teachers, peers, family all believe in you and want you to succeed, so you keep on doing this Thing because everyone seems so goddamn excited about it. You keep banging your head into walls and stumbling into things in the quest for perfection until one day you decide to let your guard down. You remember those other things you liked to do when you were younger and, feeling frustrated with your current art, you add them in just because you needed the release. Something clicks and a light ignites to guide your path where there was only darkness before.

Walking the Camino, I learned that sometimes the answers don’t present themselves in clear ways. You need to really pay attention to them. Take what’s coming next for example: I’m moving away from modeling, into photography, and trying to go back to writing at the same time.  I’m debating graduate school, trying to find where I can call home, while simultaneous trying to keep my head afloat. The universe conspires to help those seeking out their personal legends. If I was meant to do modeling and photography, I honestly think more opportunities would present themselves. I would sell more prints and galleries would come knocking (well, they still may, I am young after all). I’ve learned that my best response comes from the blending of visual and written works. Telling stories. Telling them honestly.

Sometimes the journey you think you start out with is not the one you are truly meant to be on. Sometimes it’s a stepping stone to get to the next place. Sometimes its just a brief period of happiness before you truly test yourself.

And every once in a while, you decide that the Journey itself is enough, that it is the Masterpiece you have been searching for. So you take a step and steer a course, trusting that things will work out the way they are supposed to.

Lessons from my Stepfather (and other situations)

When I was a child, things were simple. When I was ten, my mother became sick. No one knew what was going on with her and as a last ditch effort, she went to see a spiritual healer named J.C.

J.C. Just like the initials of Jesus Christ. And true to the lord, he helped heal my mother. Eventually over time, she would work for him and they would fall in love and get married.

At first things went fine- we were his Cinderella story, lifted from poverty into the golden arms of wealth and health. He gave my mother a job (working for him with no pay) and took control of the financial situation. Everything went through him, there was no sense of self for my mother. Things had to all go through him, friends, money, feelings. I remember distinctly being 14 and being told my feelings were not valid, that J knew best and not to mention things (like being depressed or queer) because “you don’t want the label.” (Read: he didn’t want the labels near him)

But like Cinderella, eventually midnight came and the fantasy went away. His children could scream and yell their way into new cars and college payments, but if my mother’s children asked for $20 to do something, it was tallied up and held against us. If we went around him and asked our grandfather for help with something, he would get pissed and ask why we didn’t come to him. We learned the lesson that things are never given freely but with strings attached and honestly anyone I have met with his personality has done the same thing.

Eventually the situation became more manipulative and turned into gaslighting. By making it so that my family was almost entirely dependent upon him (and luckily I started working at 12/13 so I was not as dependent on him), we had to go with his opinions and his directions. We were at the mercy of his children’s violent rages but told “that’s how families deal with things” as if broken bones and being chased around by someone brandishing a butchers knife was par for course. Distinctive memories were perpetually reexamined because “no that’s not how it happened,” even if it happened five minutes ago, was constantly stated.

It got to the point of where we were told so much “that’s not how it happened” that my Ma started feeling memory issues. We felt like we were losing our minds.

Eventually things fell apart and my mother got out. He still held sway over the situation for another few years until he fired her and had only payments left as per their divorce agreement.

Coming out on the other side, I can say a few things:

1. If someone is controlling a situation completely, that is abuse. Financial control is one of the most common forms of emotional abuse. You turn the person completely dependent upon you to keep control of the situation. If, in the case of BSDM and PE, things for a scene/etc are consensual, that is one thing and perfectly acceptable as all parties involved are on the same page. That is not abuse. Telling people how to feel, think, and act is. Catfishing someone is abuse. Taking on someone’s personality after repeatedly making snide comments about it for years is just straight up manipulative and a dick move. Enabling situations such as if the person is an alcoholic, getting them to drink constantly with you and if they don’t want to saying things like “you’re boring or no fun” because they don’t want to drink, is enabling, manipulative and abusive.

2. No means no. A repeated use of the word no and asking for no contact, then ignoring those wishes of the individual is abusive. You have turned the person into an object and ceased to allow them to be a human.

3. Gaslighting is one of the worst forms of abuse. You beat the person down and tell them how things went and what to think of a situation and make it so that they literally question everything. Gaslighting kills trust. After being in those situations, it’s hard as shit to ever trust a person again, but know if you have been through it, you are valid, you are wonderful, and you will survive.

4. Abusive people always think they are good people. They don’t acknowledge what they are doing, they only see things through rose colored glasses. I’ve said this before and will say it again: if you have to state you are a good person, you probably aren’t. Anyone I have met that has to lay that claim out loud tends to not see past their own nose. The best people I have met all believe themselves to be shitty people so they constantly are trying to make up for it. They make no claims to being good because they are in the process of growth and recognize that sometimes things go south on their end, but they tend to be the ones to correct their behavior.

5. Abuse always get worst when the people in power have lost control. There is often a struggle to regain control, sometimes over the course of a couple years while things are falling apart, but when the person finally claims back their own power, it causes a flip to switch.

And here’s the thing, living through those situations marks a person. They literally will change elements of their life to avoid being put in those situations again and they will be constantly on their guard with people. You can eventually get past, learn the lessons, and move on but those years stick with you. Regaining your own power can be a slow, long process, but I promise you if you want it back, you will regain it. It may be messy, but the universe will help you to find yourself again and you will come out the other side stronger than before.

Gaslighting

After living in a gas lighting situation, there are two ways things happen in my mind. One of them is the truth. The other is also the truth. The actual truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Gas lighting seeps into your soul, calling into question the validity of your own thoughts and memories. As a result, a lot of times you fracture and the memories fracture with you. The result looks something like this:

When I was a sophomore in high school, I took Spanish with Señora DiGiavanni. One spring day, we were taking a test during class. I sat on the far side of the room, test finished and turned over, gazing out the window across the room, when I hear a voice: “Fishburne, eyes on your own paper.”

This is where things split. In one story I am cheating. I am openly staring at the test of the girl next to me and trying to determine the answers. In it I am shamed by the teacher and try to mumble excuses to her, but my eyes still glance over, trying to copy Evelyn’s answers. In another story, I am finished with my test and staring out the window. When called up, I tell Señora that my test is finished and I was just staring. I bring my test up to her desk to prove it and tell her I have a hard time because my eyes and mind want to be outside so I perpetually stare in that direction. Part of my mind remembers the calm of staring out that window, the blue sky and green grass drawing me more than the lull of the classroom ever could. Part of my mind is fixated on someone else’s paper, trying to get the answers, but I can’t read them, can never read them.

She moves me to a different seat near the window the next day and nothing happens again.

When I was twenty-seven, I lost everything when a flood hit while driving in California. It was early March and my GPS put me on a road between two fields. I came up upon some water and my memory splits.

In the first memory, there is an inch of water and I proceed cautiously, wondering if I will have to back out or if it’s like this the whole way down. I make it three-quarters of the way down the road when my car suddenly rocks and water is all around me. My engine dies and I start to sob, grabbing my rain boots from behind my seat and opening my door to see what happened. Water starts flooding in and I close it, using the open window to climb in and out of my car over the next hour while I wait for someone to show up and find me.

In the second memory, I blow past a road closed sign. I see the water but believe I can just cowboy it through. It’s not that deep, I think, I have somewhere to be in a couple minutes. As I proceed, the water is higher and I am reckless, pushing my car ahead into the water closer and closer to dry land on the other side. I make it three-quarters of the way down the road when my car starts to go. I start screaming and cursing at this point, wild with adrenaline, praying, praying, praying my car and I will make it out alive. I pull hard to the right to avoid a tree trunk and my car stops, killed by the water. I grab my rain boots from behind my seat and open my door to see what happened. Water starts flooding in and I close it, using the open window to climb in and out of my car over the next hour while I wait for someone to show up and find me.

My car is totaled and I am stranded in waist high water.

Sometimes I think the truth is found somewhere between the stories we tell ourselves and the stories as they happen. The telling changes every time, memory changes every time, and in those tellings we have the opportunity to make ourselves better or worse than we truly are. When you have lived in a situation where the foundation of everything is constantly under attack, you develop certain tools to allow yourself to survive. Splitting yourself into two often is the easiest way to both float above and observe the situation while actively living it. Coming out on the other side, you have to pick a truth to believe in. The voices will always be in your head, questioning your actions and motives in the voice of your abuser, but you learn to silence them over time in favor of a truth that makes sense to you, that lifts you up and helps you to create a new foundation.

You survive and get to chose what truth is yours. Now don’t let them take it away from you again.

I survived the gasfire

I spend a lot of time wondering if I’m a narcissist. Living wit John eroded my mind in a lot of ways and I find I blame myself for everything and anything. I picked up a lot of his traits for dealing with things and I perpetually wonder if I’m the one pulling the trigger. If I’m the one always at fault and the abuser in every situation.

It’s easy to fall into that trap. To view yourself as the one always out of control and in the wrong. I wonder if I project my faults and shortcomings onto others. If you have the same problem popping up over and over again, John said, you are the common denominator. But what if that lesson was also false? What is there is truth in every lesson he gave me buried deep, deep down beneath his fake smiles and persona?

I spend a lot of time worrying about this- worrying that I’m the devil in a red dress and hell bent on taking everyone down with me. That I’m as self-destructive as John always said, that I push for the collapse and rarely pause to think of anyone else. That I lay the bear trap and lay in wait to catch someone in my metal claws. That I am the wolf at my own door, struggling to blow it all up just to feel one single moment of power. That I seek this power- some form of control for a person who always feels powerless.

I worry I’m toxic. That I kill everything in my path and choke all the life out of my relationships. That I’m the one to blame for everything that has ever gone wrong. I doubt my memories of fights and events, my own shame heightened and magnified a thousand times until everyone across the whole galaxy can see it and knows to stay away.

The thing about emotional abuse is that it stays with you. It’s not a mark to bare on your surface but built into every cell in your body. It colors ever single fucking aspect of your life whether you want it to or not. It informs every element of how you think, act, and feel, no matter how hard you fight it.

And goddamn do you try hard to fight it, with every single fiber of your being, with every breath and every step. With every glance and every word you never let pass your lips. Some days it’s a losing battle and the monsters in your head get you. Some days you’re only fighting a straw opponent, hacking and cutting into the air and thinking you’re making this grand progress. Two steps forward, five steps back, a running leap into the void and there you go- free, even just for one blissful second, nothing but air all around you. That free fall becomes a life line, a place of safety where there is no chance of control and you know the only way to survive is to just let go and go as limp as a rag doll. That’s how they teach you to fall, it’s the reason drunks tend to survive car crashes. You can’t brace yourself for the impact, you just have to give in to it with everything you’ve got and believe you’re going to make it through.

I wonder how many people I’ve damaged in my crash, how many lives I’ve changed and ruined on my path. I’m capable of setting fire to everything so I learned how to put them out, to minimize the effects and collect the coals when I’m done.

Maybe I’m better than I give myself credit for. Maybe I’m worse. Maybe everything I’ve been through or thought or said or done has led me to this moment in time, this ledge I’m sitting on trying to make a decision, knowing I can’t change a goddamn thing in the past but I can absolutely change how I am in the present. I’m my greatest champion and my own worst critic. The beginning and the end with nothing to do but release. I have to believe that I’ve got this, that I can survive the abuse and my own mind, that I can reach down deep inside myself to face my demons and tell my own story.

I can rewrite my story. It starts today.

Look, Ma, I Finally Wrote About Love

I’m envious of the women who write about love. The ones that make a relationship appear as both a battlefield and an orgasm, utterly draining and a holy sacrament of human activity. I can’t write about love. My experiences are limited- there was Jason who professed his love on a high ride only to turn his head out the car window and start vomiting profusely. I calmly stopped at a stop sign and informed him he had to clean it up. There was Forest the Ranger who told me he loved me while Playa dust swirled around us and all I could think was “how very typically Burning Man.” There was a Nick, a Dave, and an Erik. A Stephanie and a Courtney and some others I’m forgetting. I’m Han- when I hear the words “I love you” my answer is always “I know.” No emotion behind it, just a simple “I know.” I can write of disasters and triumph, of pain and lessons. I can weave words about loss and build castles out of car wrecks. If you listen closely, you’ll find I can create entire civilizations, the religious sects and political intrigues, the rows of buildings and the collapsing facades. I can write of every human interaction since the beginning of time and of the ones that came to us prior to the Big Bang. I can sing of stars and heroes, of villains and abusers, but never, oh never, can I write of that kind of love you fall into. The one that is all encompassing and maddening, joyful and heart wrenchingly sad. Maybe if I viewed love as disasters the words would flow. “I love you.” “I know, but have you heard about the plane that fell from the sky, throwing suitcases into apartment buildings and bodies into trees? Have you heard about the wars or the plagues or the fall of the Templars?” “I love you.” “I know.”

The Difference a Decade Makes

What have we learned, Charlie Brown?

Recently, I’ve seen a lot of posts going around Facebook and Instagram where people compare their current self with one a decade prior and it got me thinking. 2006 and 2016 were both monumental years for me in terms of lessons and personal growth. Before I go further, let’s do a quick recap on each year.

In 2006, I was in my senior year of high school. I was originally going to graduate early to get away from my home situation, but fell in love with track so I took my senior year at a local college in order to continue competing. Early 2006, I qualified for Nike Nationals in Pole Vaulting. I didn’t end up going, but just knowing I qualified was a massive deal. In May 2006, I finished my first year of college and readied myself for the last six weeks of my track season. I had seeds for states in both pole vaulting and long jump, and was close for the 400 and 100 hurdles. On May 18, 2006, I competed in the league championships, taking home gold in pole vault and long jump. The team came in second, breaking our league winning streak just shy of one decade. On May 19, 2006 everything changed when I was struck at 60mph in my driver side door by a Toyota Tacoma. I fractured my wrist, both sides of my pelvis and my hip, shattered my femur, lacerated my head, liver, and kidneys, and did massive neurological damage. I had four blood transfusions and a surgery to place metal rods in my femur and hip was done on May 20th to try and see if I would pull through and make it.

Not that I remember any of this. I remember turning left out of my friends road, across the street from the house I grew up in at one point, the same house where a long-dead Furby came alive in the dead of the night while I was huddled under the covers reading The Chamber of Secrets. I saw the spot in the yard the Furby would have landed when I flung it out the window, terrified of it’s strange noises. I went up the hill where a few years prior my sister and I had to carry our little brother down. He had torn his scrotum on a bike at a neighbors and instead of driving him down to our house or calling our mother, we were told we had to come get him. I remember a brief moment in the emergency room when I was so incredibly thirsty and wasn't allowed water. A wet rag was used to dampen my lips and I remember a wild rage coming over me as I grabbed someone’s hand and hungrily sucked on the rag. I remember seeing my coach’s face right before I went into surgery but not how I got there or what was happening. I remember that a couple weeks after I got out of the hospital, I received a phone call from a teacher wondering why I wasn’t going to prom. I was hopped up on darvacet and the thought of going to a prom the same night I was supposed to have been competing at states was the last thing I wanted to do.

I relearned how to walk in less than three months. That August I was slated to start my freshman year at Denison University and I was bound and determined to make it through. I went from a wheelchair to a walker to crutches before finally making it to a cane. That fall, I fell in love with photography, book making, and silk screening and decided I was going to change my major from athletic training to art. That October, my father would take a fall and set his Parkinson’s with Lewy Bodies Dementia into motion. That was the first time we had spoken in three years and I felt like an asshole for the years I shut him out.

In many ways, 2016 was a bit of a mirror. It started out living in Minnesota with two of my best friends, watching their love life deteriorate as they found the courage to leave an abusive relationship. Late February, I started across the country with all of my stuff headed for Washington to start a new life. Then came the flood. From the flood came an outpouring of support and love I never knew was possible. I had gone out west to find a community for myself, never dreaming that I had built one online over the course of the last five years.

I made it to Washington, tried to pick up the pieces, only to flee in the dead of the night like a thief. Things that I had thought were settled apparently weren’t due to lack of communication between the couple and I ran into another narcissist. I had never outright run from something before; anytime an obstacle came into my path, I would meet it head on and triumph in some way or another. This time was different. It shattered me to the point of a full-on mental breakdown where snot bubbles and salt stained cheeks became my norm. So I ran. I ran like I did in track, as fast in a direction as I humanly could. I became suicidal and had to hid my medications from myself to make it through.

Somewhere in Wyoming, after the thousandth time of listening to “Wait for It” and alternating between hyperventilating and wildly laughing, I became really, really calm. I knew my situation wasn’t going to be fixed by crying it away or screaming it away, I couldn’t hike another 500 miles or try to kill myself to fix it. At that point in time, I had pretty much lost everything I could imagine and suddenly this bright clarity came to me. I realized I had hit my real, true rock bottom and just like that, I was free. I realized if I had nothing left to give, not even a fuck in the world, then I had everything to gain. I could pick a direction and just go. My life was entirely up to me at this point and nothing else in the world mattered. I had no hang-ups, no place to live, and nothing but this wild desire to finally live.

Jump forward a couple months and here I am. I’ve dealt with losing everything and gaining it all back in more ways than I thought possible. I lost a shit ton of teeth and found myself with a slew of medical problems that are still not being figured out, but it’s ok. I think it was just the universe’s way of telling me I was done modeling. I walked the walls in Dubrovnik and followed Cersei’s Walk of Shame. I saw water so blue that it was blinding. I spent my birthday in South Africa and puked out of someone’s car after drinking for the first time in god knows how long. I lost some people I was close with, one with the Washington affair and another when I couldn’t hold a pity party any longer. I realized some people don’t want to get better, they prefer the attention of being a martyr, and sometimes it’s better to let go of a toxic friendship than keep holding yourself hostage to it. I opened up about my struggles and found a thousand other people just as desperately in need of love as I was.

At points, I honestly didn’t know if I was going to survive 2016. Then I started thinking of this year as my personal phoenix. I had to burn everything down to the ground in order to rise above it. I started projects I feel confident and happy with; as I grow, they grow with me, filling me with so much energy and joy that I think my heart could burst. I think back to the person I was at the beginning of the year and feel like she was a childhood friend I lost touch with over the years. I realized I don’t hold any ill-will towards those I’ve had conflict with this year. I learned my lessons and truthfully that’s all I can really do. For the first time in a long time I am excited. My health is still shit and who knows if that will ever get figured out, but I’m off pain medication for the first time in a decade and know that maybe my health is currently shit because I needed to stop and gather myself.

I learned that if you send love out into the world, it will come back to you a million-fold. I’m not the crumpled, wet mess I was. I’m stronger, kinder, and more motivated than ever before. And I can’t wait to see what 2017 has in store.

Pain

A couple months ago, I was sitting with a friend. The subject of pain came up and she turned to me, dead faced, and said, “X and I have higher pain tolerances than you because we’re into BDSM.” I think I laughed in her face, but it bugged me, settled under my skin like a government implant. The thing with chronic pain and chronic illness is that you don’t ask for it. Every day you’re in varying levels of pain, some days better and some days will knock you flat on your ass. I’ve blacked out from pain, fainted, and thrown up, only to get back up and have to continue on as if nothing ever happened. There are always things to do and I don’t let things hold me back. My neurological system perpetually feels like I’m holding my body about six inches above an open flame, and the sharp pain in my bones reminds me that the cold is setting in. I can tell it’s going to be a bad winter, my bones and muscles tense and creaking like the stairs in this house I lived in that was a part of the Underground Railroad. I’ve wondered if I could redirect the pain by having someone beat on me the way my friends get in a BSDM scene. I wonder if making a cut or incision will help or if I will just have another pain, this time bleeding, to contend with. I’ve wondered if crashing my car would help, to recreate the original break patterns and see if the impact could piece me back together as it shattered me apart. If somehow that act of external pain will migrate it, direct it into something tangible, something I can show my doctors and say “see?” Truthfully I feel like it won’t even dull the pain; it will just leave a mark and I already have so many that I’m losing count of the stories.

I’ve had doctors say it’s all in my mind. That the breaks and shatters that show up on X-rays are somehow figments of my imagination. I went into a doctor's office yesterday to have a script refilled and try to figure out what is going on health wise. The Lyme test came back negative and she smiled at me like “see nothing else is wrong then right?” The problem was I’ve spent the last month feeling like I have bugs crawling on my skin and have dealt with tension heads and migraines nonstop for two months on top of everything else. She handed me a depression form, making me check these little boxes asking how I felt the last two weeks. The last two weeks were hell between the election and six different people coming to me with suicidal ideations. She guilted me into counseling and the woman told me I should check into a local shelter to get out of the living situation I was in. It angered me, a full on mental pain, sharp and different from the one that lives in my body, because I was only in for a muscle relaxer that I’d been trying for a week to get refilled, the last medication I had left for pain management since going off opiates and pain management in April. My symptoms that could be Lyme and could be Fibromyalgia were yet again ignored and I was sent to counseling where a woman looked at me and I could tell had no idea what exactly to do, while the script was never filled.

I wondered if maybe the war I felt in my body, the symptoms upon symptoms upon symptoms that keep popping up were imaginary kind of like the friends you have as a child. So sometimes I try to wish them away, thinking if it’s simply in my head than I can rewrite the story. There are studies that show how women’s pain is often ignored. We are told the symptoms in our bodies are symptoms of the mind, even by other women. So they grow and begin morphing into something bigger, built upon by years of mistrust and no real help.

I think of sitting on that friend’s couch. “We’re into BDSM. We have higher pain tolerances than you.”

Orlando Went Dark Tonight

I remember being ten and hearing about Matthew Shepard and feeling like a hole was torn inside me. Something about his face and the events surrounding his death crushed something deep inside, something my ten year old brain didn’t exactly have a name for yet. I was terrified of Wyoming for years afterwards, saying a silent prayer whenever I happened to pass on 80 through Laramie. I was afraid of my dreams, the same one occurring since I was three, in which I am in a concrete room with a glass cube illuminated by a single lightbulb. Inside the glass cube, nude bodies are moving against each other, pressing and pulling and creating new shapes and spaces. I was afraid of the girls on my bus, the ones who bullied me and who would lure me in with questions about whether I preferred hot dogs or tacos. When I answered tacos because I was vegetarian, I was told I was a lesbian and mocked mercilessly for it for years. I was terrified they knew what the girl across the street had me do when I was eight, that they saw some secret I didn’t have access to.

When I was thirteen, I came out as bisexual. At the time, there was not a lot of talk of multiple sexual orientations and I figured since I didn’t seem to have a gender preference, that must be what I was. I remember the scorn and the ridicule. Apparently everyone was bisexual that year, it was en vogue, and so I was told to shut up. My family reacted by informing me I was too young to know and that I didn’t want the labels. I kept my activities with females and males secret, like if no one knew about them, they wouldn’t exist. 

When I was seventeen, my friends and I started joking that I was asexual. In my head, I could simple split myself in two to reproduce and create an evil army. By nineteen, I realized that asexual was a thing and that was what I was. Occasionally, I would feel a slight sexual pull, more often based out of a desire for experience, and eventually settled on grey-asexual as the best term for myself. From eighteen to twenty-three, I sought solace in the dark dance floors of various jam bands in various cities. I would take illicit drugs because it was easier than dealing with my mind and body for a few hours, the physical pain from the car accident sharpened by the mental stress of years of gas lighting, depression, and anxiety. I found others who felt like me, who were looking for an escape from the possibility that we would turn out just as miserable as our parents. No one judged and if someone was too spun out, people watched out, got medics if needed, water and love otherwise. You were who you wanted to be, a higher version of yourself aided by a crowd surging with love, lights washing over faces, aided more often than not drugs, just enough for things to be heightened, never enough to fully leave the moment.

When I returned back to art, really truly returned and immersed myself in it, I left the dance floor for a car and some wild hope. I found a new space for my identity to be valued and valid. A place where others can be who they are. When the news broke about the mass shooting in Orlando, a monstrosity of hate that sought to rob a community of a safe space, the same hole in my chest that Matthew Shepard created opened. I wanted to gather my thoughts regarding this before speaking. Because the truth of the matter is, I understand the importance of finding a space where you can be your best self, even for a couple hours. To have that taken from you creates this sense of feeling powerless, as if no where is really safe.

But the wonderful thing to come out of this was the aftermath, when people came out to remind others they loved them, that they were thinking of them, that they were there to offer a safe space for them if they needed it. It’s not a perfect thing, and truthfully I am exhausted and saddened for those individuals who were impacted by the Pulse shooting. It reminds me of why i generally remain quiet on sexual identity. Because in times of fear, it feels safer to hide down a part of yourself than it is to let it shine. But to those whose voices are finding their power, know that I love you and want you to succeed. You will get through this and if you need a safe space, I will create one for you. The hole in your heart will start to fill in again, though the scar will always be there. I can’t promise things will be easier, but I will walk by your side and listen to your voices when you speak.

I love you.