Must we carry our sadness from the cradle to the grave?
The first bout of grief many queer and trans people experience is the one where…
Our Youth is Stolen from Us
Often before we can even verbalize the feeling. It’s the depression along with feelings of otherness and isolation. It’s knowing that something about you is making life way harder than it needs to be. While our straight counterparts get to experience their early years without pushback, LGBTQ people often have to fight an uphill battle just to feel even the slightest bit of humanity.
Imagine for a moment you’re a freshman in high school. You don’t know many others like you, you’re not allowed to…
Hurricane Ida has thrown my life into a small tailspin. I only hope I can land on my feet.
It’s been difficult to start writing again. Every time I make an attempt, I’m met with brain fog and self-deprecating thoughts. I’m frustrated. This situation is frustrating. Hurricane Ida shredded Louisiana over two weeks ago and in her aftermath my life, and the life of many others has been upended.
I guess I should consider myself lucky though, being that I have a place to stay right now. It’s not ideal, but it is something. Even still, I’m not a fan of accepting my conditions just because someone has it worse off than me. …
Anti + Vaccination
I didn’t see this coming, but it hurts all the same.
Disappointment is such a funny feeling. It sneaks up on you in the dead of the night, dealing a heavy blow to the skull. Other times it charges in from the front, like a bull loose in a china shop. It’s ruthless, uncaring, and cold. It often chooses to overstay its welcome, and even once gone there will be a lingering odor for months.
This is how I’m feeling after a recent argument with someone very close to me. For the longest time anti-vaxx rhetoric has felt distant, something I would only ever take notice of on the internet. I…
Distance becomes all the more real when we…
After the Storm
Unpacking the criticism toward disaster victims
Why would anyone choose to live somewhere where hurricanes always hit?
If you live in an area that constantly gets hit by natural disasters, why stay there? If your house gets blown to pieces every other year, do you think the investment is worth it?
This never-ending barrage of questions seems to always pop up after the damage has been done. At our most recent low point, everyone else in the country has offered their opinion on how we should live our lives.
Enough is enough. Climate change has been and will continue to be a thing for the foreseeable…
One day I’ll float away too.
There’s few things more painful in this world than watching a mother lose her child. That was one of my earliest memories, sitting in this small funeral home in Southern Texas. I had no understanding of why I was there, let alone the fact that everyone around me was deep in grief. The only thing that made sense at the time was the sound of a woman’s pain echoing throughout the room.
She had lost her child way too soon and this was her last chance to tell him goodbye.
My mother sat beside my sister and I, quiet and…
Existential ravings on race
Everyday I wake up tired from racism. I wake up each day worried about the well-being of my friends and loved ones. Opening my eyes to a world that will always render a forfeit over the lives of my people.
It’s too damn much.
A little blue ball floating in a big universe, the earth supports life by nothing more than luck and chance. An infinite amount of things had to happen for us to be where we are now. We live on a planet blessed by circumstance. …
Discrimination and hatred are always closer than you think.
Trans bathroom bills. Trans kids in sports. Trans murders. Trans health. Trans people in general. Everywhere you look, it can feel as if this particular subset of the population is under attack. These assaults on the humanity of trans people can seem distant, their problems unlike the ones faced by cisgender folks.
The idea of distance and difference between oppressions is a problem, as hatred and fear of trans people is something that often works in tandem with other forms of oppression. A trans woman doesn’t look “woman” enough to pass for one? Who created the rules around what is…
To this day I still think about the great porn purge on Tumblr a few years ago and how it did nothing to actually stop porn and "lewd" images from being proliferated on the platform. It shredded a safe community for many people to learn about and see the types of sex and content THEY wanted to see. I'll never get back to consistency of niche blogs that were tuned to my favorite kinds of porn.
So many LGBTQ people used sites like Onlyfans to support themselves in a society that often pushes us out of "regular" and "respectable" jobs…
Or yesterday. Or the day before that.
I may not feel like one for the near future if we’re being honest. Like capturing fireflies on a hot summer night, you’re only able to do it when the bugs choose to show themselves. That’s how I often feel when it comes to my masculinity, both fleeting and fascinating at the same time.
I’m sweating, my feet hurt, and I’ve been chasing them for hours. Every time one looks close enough for capture, it turns out to be a trick of the light.
Why keep up with this endeavor? I couldn’t tell you, but I’m grateful for the exercise…
