Episode 21 - Supports Women

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Episode 20 - Loves Animals

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Is Tired of Being Miserable

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Episode 18 - Wants No Scrubs

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Episode 17 - Struggles to Stay Sober

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Episode 16 - Needs a Creative Outlet

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Episode 15 - Walked Away

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Episode 14 - Loves New Years

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Episode 13 - Loves Christmas

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Episode 12 - Hates Christmas

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Episode 11 - Is Thankful

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Episode 10 - Is Queer

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Is Queer

I'm queer. 

I'm pansexual, really. But above all else, I'm queer. I've always been queer. Before I knew what to call it, in a time when Rent was my identity, and television was extremely problematic. In a time when Matthew Shepard's murder showed us what society was capable of. 

I grew up in NY, surrounded by queer role models. My mom was queer, even though she later redacted and said it was a phase. Her best friends were queer. They always had me repeating back queer phrase when I was in my young parroting phase of life. "I read you like a trashy novel" is still my favorite of these phrases. Ballroom culture was part of me before I even knew what it was. Glitter, leather, gold lamé, feathers and rhinestones were at the center of my world. 

As I grew older I yearned for the dramatics, the theater, the color of life. I also really wanted to kiss girls as much as I wanted to kiss boys. When I was in the 10th grade, I had a friend over. She told me she was into girls, I admitted the same. And so she kissed me, in the laundry room of my mother's apartment complex. 

I came out. As best I could. Everyone I knew and trusted took it in stride. "You're queer? Yeah, so is everyone else", and we moved on with our lives. My mother accepted it but insisted it was a phase, continued to push that until my 20s. I never quite understood at what point she'd realize the "phase" had gone on too long to be a fucking "phase".

I held hands with girls at school, to which older, popular boys found issue. We got pushed into lockers, called dykes, threatened with head shaving, etc. The school was no better. I got kicked out of several dances for showing up with a female date. 

My senior year was easiest. Columbine happened and suddenly we didn't care to treat each other like shit anymore. We suddenly had common ground… we didn't want to die. We all hung out together, partied together and genuinely cared for one another. It was really nice.

Years passed and I became more confident in my queerness. Hanging out in the Village, going to gay clubs, attending pride parades (even marched once or twice), just living my best life. I found dating difficult as there is a stigma that bi/pansexuals are not dateable. That they are flighty and really want to kiss women to turn on their men. Infuriating. For a long ass time I felt like I didn't have a place in either the LGBT+ or hetero worlds. I was… something else. 

Luckily times have changed. While there are still stigmas, it's become more and more okay to be yourself, however you identify. We see things as spectrums now, as they've always been. Flowing, fluctuating, evolving with time. 

I'm queer. Maybe everyone is… a little bit at least.

Episode 9 - Has Been Attacked

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For The Girl Who has been assaulted...

Some days, I feel strong.
Some days I’m empowered and I know that I did the best I could.
Some days I take pride in the way I’ve reconstructed myself after the hardest moments I’ve experienced.
Some days, I’m weak.
Some days, I’m angry.
Some days I’m just plain fucking pissed off.
Some days, I’m happy.
Some days, I love myself.
Some days, I hate myself.
Some days, I hate you. All of you. Everyone who has ever made me feel like I didn’t own the rights to my body.

I’d love to tell you it only happened once. I’d love to tell you that I filed a police report, that we went to court and he went to jail. But it didn’t, and I didn’t, and we didn’t, and he didn’t.

None of those statements are what my reality looked like. Truthfully, that’s not what most of our realities look like. The truth is, most of the time we are too afraid/scared/paralyzed to ever report what happened to us. We see the stigma. We see the news reports of the people who spend no jail time, of the cases that get dropped, of the victim blaming. And we feel defeated. We think there’s no way we can ever feel whole again.

Those of us who have lived that life or walked in those shoes know the hopelessness of it all. We know the nightmares, we remember the trauma. We know what it’s like to wake up in a cold sweat, filled with so much fear that we think we’re back in that same moment again. We live with this, we do our best, and we carry on.

This one goes out to you.

Episode 8 - Is into Spooky Stuff

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Episode 7 - Lived in a Haunted House

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For The Girl Who lived in a haunted house

The light was barely shining in my room through the unlatched door. A heavy door, with a handle that looked like it was crafted by hand in the late 1800’s. There was a keyhole but no key as far as I ever knew, and a latch-lock mechanism on the inside. It wasn’t exactly the typical door you would see on the bedroom of a small child. It seemed ancient. Everything in that house did. 

My eyes were barely open when I caught a glimpse of a figure out of the corner of my eye. Had the door been fully closed, I don’t think I would have noticed. I tried my best to rationally reason where the figure was coming from. Laundry on my dresser, I thought. No, that wasn’t it. The shape didn’t add up. I sat still for what felt like hours and just stared. I blinked and tried to re-focus my eyes. The figure was getting clearer. Tall, thin, with a hat that looked like it belonged atop Zorro’s head. “I must be dreaming,” I thought. I blinked again, and then it started to move. Toward me. Quickly. I didn’t close my eyes, I didn’t look away, I just screamed. Before he could get to me, my door swung open. Mom. And poof: he was gone. Already knowing the deal, mom climbed in bed with me. “It’s okay, baby. Go back to sleep.” 

I was 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 and I can’t tell you which one because this was an almost nightly occurrence in my house. I don’t have any clear memories of a night I spent in that house that did not result in me waking up, at one point or another, screaming. My mom would crawl in my bed, dreary and half-asleep, and lay with me until I returned to slumber.  

For this experience, I was awake. But many of my terrors in that house happened while I slept. I began having nightmares at a very young age. I don’t remember exactly when they started, because it felt like it was just normal to have these experiences. I didn’t always wake up screaming in the beginning, or so I’ve been told. I remember as a small child telling my mom that I needed to wake up from the nightmares before they got too scary, and I couldn’t figure out how to wake myself up. She told me to scream. Close my eyes and scream at the top of my lungs in my dreams, and I’d wake up. 

It worked...for a while. Eventually my dreams figured out that this was my escape route, and they learned. They adjusted. I would close my eyes, wail as loud as I could muster, open my eyes and still be in the same hellish nightmare. I remember having dreams where I screamed for what felt like eternity before I finally woke up. 

I swore I was sick. Something had to be wrong with me. It wasn’t normal to have these nightmares every single night. Something was just...off. I never thought I'd get a restful nights’ sleep. That was, until we moved away. And the nightmares went away. And other members of my family admitted they, too, had seen the mysterious Zorro-looking man. It took several years of anxiety that they would someday return for me to realize that the nightmares weren’t because of me. There was no evil that resided in my soul, that spilled out through my subconscious and into my dreamland. I wasn't hallucinating. There was never anything wrong with me. 

It was the house. 

Episode 6- Is the Fat Friend

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For the Girl Who is the Fat Friend

You ever look around a table and realize you are different from everyone else in some obvious way? You realize the chairs hurt your ass and the waitress offers you, specifically, dessert. Do people go out of their way to tell you how beautiful you are...despite your size? Do your friends only ask to borrow your shoes?

You are probably the fat friend.

There is nothing wrong with being the fat friend. I'm the fat friend! I'm cute, I'm funny, I have great stories, I'm great at makeup, I'm artistic and I happen to be fat. 

My friends really don't make a big deal about this fact. They know my story. They know my weight is a very touchy point for me. However, it's a part of who I am, part of my day to day. It makes a difference to where I go, what I wear, how comfortable I'm going to be. 

Are there stairs? How many? I don't want to be the one winded bitch when we get to our destination. How is the seating? Am I going to feel like the chairs were designed for children? Will my ass be numb before the drinks arrive?

It can be exhausting hearing about other friends struggle with self image and weight, when you see them as skinny and gorgeous. Being insecure and struggling with yourself image seems to be given for the us.  But that's what I've learned as the fat friend, everyone has insecurities behind their smile. We all have our struggles. We are not alone, even when you're the fat friend.