my mom calls today, and somehow we end up talking about how she’s a bad mother (she brought it up, not me)
she blames it on trauma. (her dad died in 9/11)
she tells me how i can never ever imagine what it’s like and how i can’t possibly understand how hard it was for her to get through everything.
ya know what? fuck you.
try getting raped at 18 years old. not telling anyone, except the police. having a fucking rape kit done by yourself. testifying at grand jury. STILL attending one of the top colleges in the country. wanting to kill yourself, getting ass drunk every night to get over it, and then one day deciding hey, i’m getting over it.
working through trauma is hard, but you had a team of specialists at your rehab center. you had nothing to do but knit and focus on getting better.
me? i had to focus on classes, and transferring to a new school, and getting my shit together.
and then guess what? i got better, and i was the fucking commencement speaker.
"and would you believe it she was in an armchair and she had one leg slung over the arm, a book in her lap, her legs wide apart under her skirt. I said her name twice and she was so engrossed in whatever it was she was reading she didn’t hear me and so I had to shake her by the arm. And she looked up at me and it was as if she was waking from sleep. She stretched. She actually stretched."
Maggie O’Farrell, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
don’t reject my apology and offer of friendship, (an apology that, to be honest, you didn’t deserve. espesh when i don’t even know what went wrong. but i digress.)
request that i be uninvited to a party,
act like an unruly bitch,
and then fucking subscribe to my updates on facebook.
"I’ve decided that I no longer want to have a hierarchy of value between my friendships and my love relationships: they’re both crucial, irreplaceable in my life, and f*ck anyone who wants me to choose between any of them. Not only that, but I’ve stopped classifying things as “love” or “friendship” according to arbitrary superficial details—the feelings I share with certain friends are so intimate, so beautiful, that it’s ridiculous that I don’t call them lovers just because we don’t sleep together. It’s f*cking absurd that sex should be the dividing line between our relationships, between which ones take precedence, between who we play with, live with, sleep with, who we take care of first, who we die with at last."
too bad so many of my friends choose their fuck buddies or their significant others over me.
your girlfriend treats me terribly? that’s okay, you have orgasms with her, not with me, so i’m not as important, and you should let her treat me like shit without ever telling her that’s not okay.
"When I want to know what misogyny is, I don’t ask a man. When I want to know what racism is, I don’t ask a white person. When I want to know what homophobia is, I don’t ask a heterosexual. When I want to know what transphobia is, I don’t ask a cisgender person. When I want to know what ableism is, I don’t ask an able-bodied person. The contours and definitions of oppression are best articulated by the oppressed."
some members of my college have been working on a list of demands to the administration. i happen to have helped out on a few occasions, but i missed one of the meetings, during which they went through the demands.
beneath each of the demands that i instituted (ranging from trans*-related things to ability-related things) they mentioned contacting different groups who may or may not know how to deal with that demand. for example, they cited a mental-health group when talking about learning disabilities.
i am cis-gender and i am mostly able-bodied. i stutter, and it is oftentimes not apparent at all, so i understand that i oftentimes ‘pass’ for able-bodied. i also don’t typically identify as being disabled - mostly just as a person who sometimes talks a little bit differently than most people.
when i ran into someone who had been working on the demands i asked her why she had written to consult with those groups when i was the one who had written those demands. she said, “we weren’t sure if it was a person who wasn’t disabled who had written them. we wanted to check with the groups.”
i had no idea how to respond, so i said, “i have a disability.”
“ohhhhh” was her response.
1) i shouldn’t have to prove my able-ness or my lack there of. especially when i don’t even identify as being disabled. my difference shouldn’t be what gets me into the group to let me make changes.
2) just because a person isn’t an oppressed party doesn’t mean they don’t understand the oppression. i understand that i might not understand every nuance of the oppression, but my opinion is just as valid and worthy of being involved.
i think perhaps i’m taking this quote out of context, and i kind of hope i am, because the most important thing that ANY oppressed group needs is a good group of allies. and if you’re alienating that group by not giving them a say or an opinion, well they sure as hell will not want to help you out when you need it.
we definitely shouldn’t base our definitions around these people, but without letting them have the input, we’ve lost our help, and some of our strength, as well as a great opportunity for dialog.
I can’t wait to travel all over with you. We’ll stare at the stars while camping in the best national parks, skip rocks on the stillest lakes, marvel at the bustling cities packed with pedestrians, cars, and street vendors. We’ll stay in charming inns with balconies that overlook the skyline and eat in the best hole-in-the-wall spots only locals know about. As long as your hand is in mine, I can sleep in a train car forever, just seeing the world with you.
what i would give to be your future wife… (though i’m sure i’d request to be called your partner, but we can deal with that when the day comes)
