When I put out the call for essays for BEGIN AGAIN, I didn’t know what I was going to get. The theme was, at the time it was conceived, definitely and assuredly springing from the fact that I’d just gone through a breakup after dating the same woman for five years and then getting engaged only to break it off. When you shed such a big part of your life, it leaves you asking things like “who am I now” or “who was I before this relationship”? There’s both new construction and remembering because time is a flat circle and we are, if anything, cyclical beings.
So I asked writers to explore a transition, a move, grief, a breakup, repeating patterns or breaking patterns, cycles and rebirth, remaking yourself, or laying out plans for the future while standing in the ashes of something you thought was forever. The responses were each thought-provoking takes on the concept and, I hope, valuable pieces for you all to read. The comfort of the paywall, too, lets writers open up a bit more, knowing that, at the very least, someone has to forego the anonymity of lurking on the internet and become a member to read about the writer’s grief or their mental health.
Katie Reilly, an Autostraddle team writer, wrote about re-framing her outlook on work and disability, Capitalism and worthiness — and just how damn hard it is to deprogram ourselves from the society that teaches us with very harsh and real punishments, that money is safety. Autostraddle team writer Em Win wrote about their many moves, across the country and across the world, prompted by their bipolar disorder — and then the way they are finding stability and healing via the family they once ran from. There was something that makes me so bone-achingly tired, as someone who’s moved slightly less but who’s started over in new cities (and in the same one) to think about rebuilding community time and again like that — and yet queer people persevere, we keep going, we find a way and we move through.
Jude Little shared with us some poignant prose about returning to the sea, post-top surgery, to swim again, shirtless for the first time. They were returning to a place where they’d swam with their father, who taught them to navigate the waters with their body, but who they lost before their transition. Stacy Grover also returned to her childhood, but this time to the media frenzy around JonBenét Ramsey’s murder and all the ways abuse and girlhood and exploitation on screens and magazines and in adults’ words wove into her own experiences of growing up and being preyed upon, then not believed seriously by adults. She’d never examined the media, actually willingly consumed anything about JonBenét until adulthood, and the return with critical adult eyes reveals uncomfortable truths about the way we handle true crime and, especially, the victims of violence in media and American culture.
Machi also took us on a Journey as she returned to Lagos, Nigeria, a place that is supposed to be underwater in a few decades, where queerness is illegal. From Atlanta to Lagos to Toronto to Lagos again, we travel through her experiences of queerness in snippets, following the path of water. Finally, we conclude with how this all began — with beginning again after a breakup. Lindsay Eanet’s written for us many times, and in this heartfelt work, she takes us through how nerdiness and drag helped her find herself again post-divorce. Her character? A barbarian named Rusty Broadsword.
As for the imagery, I worked with overlays of film over-exposures and film burns to bring about a sense of memory, things kept and things altered by time and fickle machinery. Thank you, always, for being members, for making this a space where queer and trans people can share our deepest selves through writing. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this series and that if you didn’t get a chance to dig in, that maybe this Sunday calls for a cup of tea and some deep reading.
BEGIN AGAIN is a series of A+ personal essays running in the first half of November 2023 where writers were asked to explore a transition, a move, grief, a breakup, repeating patterns or breaking patterns, cycles and rebirth, remaking yourself, or laying out plans for the future while standing in the ashes of something you thought was forever. And wow, how they responded. We hope you enjoy these vulnerable, sensitive, always deep but sometimes surprisingly funny works, and we’re grateful for your support that allows us to continue to publish new work from our community. These essays and paying queer and trans writers for their work are things that are made possible by A+ members like you. Queer media isn’t free to make, and we’re now and always grateful that you’re an A+ member.
-Nico
This morning there are birds singing outside my window. The fuschia-pink flowers are being pollinated. It’s not raining today. There are two seasons in Nigeria: Dry Season also known as Harmattan, and Rainy Season. I wish “Rainy Season” had a more interesting name but ever so often here, things are called just as they are. Two nights ago, I thought the roof would collapse under the weight of rain and tremors from thunder. The ceiling in the kitchen is leaking, so occasionally you’ll hear a “…thunk,” like the water considered its fall before landing. I often think about the life of water. It’s hard to avoid in Lagos, Nigeria. The flooding is worse in some areas than others. In the Oniru area, streets turn into a canal. On Third Mainland Bridge, the rain causes the cars to stand still or run too fast depending on the day.
Today, there’s no water running through the toilet system of the apartment. I look in the mirror, I feel small in big ways. There is a man-made storm on the roof. There are probably three men up there but it sounds like 50. Today is a good day to mend the roof. This flat is on the highest floor so when it pours, there’s no separation between me and the sky. When it pours it beats down the worn roof. I assume the building is an early postcolonial one, with its sentiments of colonial ethic. It’s falling apart, now, slowly but surely. The men working above are a testament to that. They pound, and bits of cement pour onto the ground. A sheet of metal cascades over the balcony, bobbing up and down like an uncertain angel before it chooses up. The sun is shining. It’s not raining today.
According to Toni Morrison, “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” If water holds memory, which one brought me back to Lagos?
I wasn’t born here, like more than half of the city’s 15,946,000, I’m a Lagos transplant.
In 2006, I am 10 years old, part of the city’s contestable population of 8,048,430. I’m fresh from Atlanta, Georgia, and while I like the way the brown school uniform sits on my body, I wish it wouldn’t frame my figure so much. I want to hide the parts of myself that stand out in contrast to the other brown-uniformed-kids, whether boy or girl. I want to be flat, unreadable, straight, narrow. I don’t want to bend or curve but don’t have control over what my body is becoming. I drop a piece of blue-lined paper (the kind with red margin lines), folded many times, into the plastic bin of the class next door. In the bathroom, I enter the last stall. The bathroom smells of Izol. It’s still early in the day so it isn’t putrid yet. I wait. The door creaks. Leather cortinas walk softly until they reach the last stall. I open the door before she knocks, and we grin victoriously before locking the door behind us. Her breath is louder than mine, or maybe my memory didn’t register anything other than that sound. We kiss. This time it’s longer. This time I feel butterflies. My memory registers this as the first time.
By 2050 Lagos (might) be underwater. The city’s infrastructure is no match for the rising sea levels (yet). (All these parentheses because I still have hope for this city, allegedly forsaken). It’s August 2023, and water has flooded the terracotta tiles on the balcony. I can see what underwater looks like, it’s pretty but I don’t want it. Does Lagos experience tsunamis? I google this, knowing the answer. No. But why? It pours so heavily, so directly that it seems like the whole city will drown in the belly of the storm. But they don’t. People walk through the waist-high aftermath of the rainstorm. Taxis grumble as they make their way out of potholes turned swimming pools.
In 2001, I’m 6 years old, and for the first time, I learn disappointment. It’s my birthday, a pool party at a local community playground. My cousin is visiting and I’m jealous because he has formed a bond with a girl who I later learn that I have a crush on. It’s alright because it’s my pool party and I can sulk if I want to. It’s okay because I’m a child and we’re easily distracted by cake, by the grass that clings to the fabric of our clothes, by the Lagos heat, by mosquitos, by water. But there is no water in the pool because my father didn’t tell management to fill it. According to my mother, this was his one responsibility. I’m 6 years old. My swimsuit clings to my skin under the heat, under the pink dress that I perform girlhood in.
It’s 2015, and I’m 20 years old, and the same sunken feeling — the one I got when I was 6 years old and looking at the dry blue tiles occupied by grass and plastic bags at my pool party — is present. I’m at the beach in Toronto and the water doesn’t carry the same bravado that the ocean I’d seen in Lagos did. Woodbine Beach is soft and graceful where the waters of Tarkwa Bay were rough and playful. Regardless, I am thankful for an expanse of water. Besides, Lagos was so long ago, 10 years ago, maybe this memory was filtered by nostalgia (false). I’m on a date with a woman visiting from Europe, my first date with a woman. The water is calm and I try and fail to match its steady rhythm as I listen to her talk about her queer adventures, as I hide that this is my first queer experience as an adult. We walk into the water, she kisses me. We lose each other’s numbers and she sifts in and out of memory.
Dry season is coming / is here/ is in that in-between of neither here nor there. They are fixing roads that formed rivers due to potholes and overflowing gutters. It’s better to get the roads done during dry season because the rain won’t get in the way. But it rained last night and the electricity went out and didn’t come back until the next time I woke up without sweat. In a few weeks, it will be a year since I moved to Lagos. In a letter to a friend, I write about the love I don’t have for Lagos (like how every driver believes they’re a NASCAR racer or how vegetarianism is reduced to a myth here) and how I find myself explaining all this so I don’t seem like a fool with a bad lover. Lagos is a good lover too; with sweet words, delivered promises of adventure, a solid gaze.
In 2021, I’m 26 years old in a 3-star airport hotel room in Lagos, with a woman I met online. I later learn that I love her, like a discovery. We do our chart readings and it makes sense to me that on that first night, it flowed like water without blockage. Like it remembered. We’re made of the same water, she has the same Cancer moon and Pisces Venus.
In 1999, I am 4, and there is a cousin-nanny-aunt bathing me with those plastic buckets that merge into and out of many colours, with waves that go from purple to orange to blue. When she brushes my teeth, she squeezes my jaw tight in her calloused palm. Through clenched teeth, she mutters words that I can only remember now as a knot in my stomach and faint pain on my gums. In the bathtub, I submerge my head inside, eyes wide open. You like water too much. Here, under the water, her voice is distant, faraway. Later, the softer cousin-aunt-nanny tells me about a river in her village that is benevolent to its people but swallows outsiders with indifference.
In September of 2023, I’m in Osogbo, Osun State, a sleepy city miles and miles away from Lagos, which is always awake. Already, I start to yearn for the familiarity of Lagos’s buoyant energy, faces that I know, cafes that are bars and bars that are clubs, and the Atlantic Ocean. I end up at a shrine for a water goddess. The tour guide is amused at my unsettledness. Its roots are in my Christian upbringing and in the synchronicities that keep bringing me to water. My friends are documenting the sacred environment with cameras, as I take in the expanse of tall trees and silence. I make eye contact with a man by the river. He approaches me and tells me he’s a priest of the goddess and asks for my name and number. I give my name but decline to give him the number. In the night, I dream of water and dancing worshippers.
To get to Tarkwa Bay Beach, you take a 15-minute boat ride from a marina across the water, then pass some menacing military men on the coast before you reach the shores of the beach. Unlike most of the other public beaches in the city, it hasn’t been privatised enough to be demarcated by class divides. Last June, on the ride back to a partner’s flat, two police officers stop our Uber, waving a dim flashlight to illuminate our bodies as they separated faster than the speed of light. You have to be fast so you don’t get caught being too tender at the wrong place at the wrong time. He makes us step out of the car and searches our tote bags, fiddles with a 500 naira note and places it in his top pocket, asks why she’s carrying a taser and if she knows it is a weapon. Does she know that it is dangerous and harmful to men in particular? I tell him about the assault rates against women in the city. He doesn’t care, and he says he’ll take us down to the station. We can’t afford to go to the station because we might pay in emptied bank accounts or scars inside and outside our bodies or— The driver pleads, sheds enough dignity, and the officers let us go. “With these police officers you have to be like water” the Uber driver advises us. It’s harder to see potholes when they’re covered in water, so we jolt forward and back. Her street is flooded, the car struggles to pass through. If the government fixed the roads, this wouldn’t be a hassle. If the government fixed the disjointed drainage system, it would be less of a hassle. If the government did many things, there would be fewer hassles, fewer extorting policemen. Why am I here?
A saxophone leads a band of instruments: trumpets, drums, cymbals. They rise and rise until the tides settle on the Afrobeat jazz, and then on the 4:28 mark, Fela’s caustic voice informs us of all the ways we use water: to bathe, to cook, to grow, even in death.
If you fight am, unless you wan die water, you no get enemy
It is 1974 in Lagos and in his popular jam “Water No Get Enemy,” Fela Kuti advises listeners to do as water does because water is vital to existence, just as the people are vital to the country. The song reflects Fela’s own resistance. He was arrested over 100 times by the government for his open criticism and his activism against corruption.
How is being queer in Lagos?
The same as everywhere else except that it’s illegal?
At a pool party during the first week I move back to Lagos, I navigate one end to another underwater:
“Machi, I thought you said you didn’t know how to swim?”
“I don’t.”
“You’re lying.”
“Apparently, I know how to swim now.”
I started my life from scratch in Lagos, but as a former third culture kid. I spent my whole life starting from scratch. Scratch is plenty to build with when you know how. But the scratches in Lagos are filled up with water and I’ve had to learn how to swim. I still haven’t told you why I’m here. There were many ways I almost drowned in Toronto, and when I resurfaced, once again alive, I thought about living and what it looked like.
Why did you move to Lagos?
I like the way the heat forces the fruit to burst open.
Outside my three-story flat is a tree that bears a fruit whose name I don’t know. On some days, the fruit falls loose from the branches and lands firmly on asphalt. On some days, the sun forces the skin to rip apart and the insides of the fruit to pour out. Bloodshot ixoras, a moth knocked down by the sun, burst nameless fruit with violet flesh, a driver dousing a black jeep with water; it’s no longer the rainy season. They’ve fixed the roof and I’ve spent 11 months in Lagos “un-hiding” — uncovering versions of myself inside other versions of myself. At the core is water.
Today I am 28. It is 2023. I live in Lagos, Nigeria. It is my home, and there is love here. A few months ago, I hosted a sapphic speed dating event. I think we all just wanted to see each other, and it was enough to know that we are here. I go on a shitty date and laugh about it at home.
Today I am 28. It is 2023. In Nigeria, it is illegal to do the things I did freely at the beaches in Toronto; watch my queer friends kiss under the eyes of a cloudy sun, hold hands with a woman on a rain-less night intoxicated by wine and wishfulness. I lie to a taxi driver, tell him that I have a fiancé. I show him a picture, a man. My cousin doesn’t know how often his image has saved me from lecherous men. Here, fiction can be a raft in a sea…There is a new president in power. He is more nonchalant than the last which is dangerous in a place with potholes the size of a crater on Mars. They raided another queer gathering — they called it a wedding…(redacted redacted redacted) there are things I cannot say because they are under water.
Take what you will as fiction.
It’s 2050. I’m 55 years old. A Moses Sumney song is playing.
Childlike curiosity about my fate
Is the only thing
That makes me stay
It keeps me alive
It keeps me alive
It keeps me alive
It keeps me breathin’ right
The city is supposed to be under water, now. This is a Choose Your Own Adventure game, now.
Am I still in Lagos? No.
I hope I’m happy here.
Am I still in Lagos? Yes.
Then maybe I want to be present as the city sinks? Is it a form of self-harm or self-preservation? Either way, this allegedly-forsaken city keeps me alive.
Feature image via Helen H. Richardson / Getty Images
BEGIN AGAIN is a series of A+ personal essays running in the first half of November 2023 where writers were asked to explore a transition, a move, grief, a breakup, repeating patterns or breaking patterns, cycles and rebirth, remaking yourself, or laying out plans for the future while standing in the ashes of something you thought was forever. And wow, how they responded. We hope you enjoy these vulnerable, sensitive, always deep but sometimes surprisingly funny works, and we’re grateful for your support that allows us to continue to publish new work from our community. These essays and paying queer and trans writers for their work are things that are made possible by A+ members like you. Queer media isn’t free to make, and we’re now and always grateful that you’re an A+ member.
-Nico
A photo of the girl flashed on the television screen. She was 6 years old and blonde just like me. She wore a pink sweater and makeup and had a beautiful smile. The day after Christmas, her father found her dead in a basement room locked by a tiny wooden latch. The newscaster, a strange man in a black suit and a striped tie explained in a stern tone that someone had abducted the girl from her bedroom and killed her. Another photo of the girl, black and white, flashed on the screen. Her eyes glistened, her lips were dark from lipstick and her eyelashes were long and curled. While this photo remained on the screen, the newscaster explained how the girl had been killed, a violent list of events I couldn’t stand to hear. I hid in my sleeping bag, but the newscaster’s cruel list continued, and then he said a phrase I had never heard before. The newscaster said the girl had been sexually assaulted. The newscast cut to interviews with the police chief, the parents of the murdered girl, and local reporters, but I wrapped myself tightly in my sleeping bag, too afraid to continue watching. I focused on that unfamiliar phrase until the newscast ended.
It was just after New Year’s 1997, and I was sleeping over at a church friend’s house in the big city. We attended church in the city because it was the only church anywhere near us that practiced the charismatic evangelism my parents believed in. I asked my friend what sexual assault meant. He always seemed to know more than I did when it came to the terrible workings of reality, which I attributed to the dangers of city living, and his unfettered television access, a freedom unavailable to me in my rural, deeply sheltered home. It means he touched her where he wasn’t supposed to, and she didn’t want it. I wished for the sleeping bag to morph into body armor and for the room to become a fortress. My small world broke open.
Watching the breaking news of JonBenét Ramsey’s murder was the first time I attributed the words sexual assault and abuse to my situation. I connected JonBenét’s assault with her death as if the events, first one then the other, were the only possible trajectory I could experience. Since someone had assaulted me, I feared that soon someone would come to my window at night, swoop me up out of bed, and strangle me to death. My house had a dark, dingy basement room with cold concrete floors. I did not want to be found dead in it.
When I returned home, I prepared for the inevitable in hopes of preventing it. Determined to make it to my 7th birthday, the birthday JonBenét never experienced, I watched Home Alone on repeat and obsessed over transforming my bedroom into a fortress. Every night I piled Legos in front of the locked door, under the windowsill, and around my bed to form a plastic deadfall that only I could navigate in the darkness. And I made it to 7 years old. At 8, I stopped sleeping under the window in my room to avoid nighttime abductors. At ten, I took martial arts classes and formed makeshift weapons to keep under my bed. I practiced pushing through my imaginary nighttime attacker to escape quickly through the house and out the basement door.
During those years, questions poured out of me. When the neighbor boy told me that all kids pulled down their pants and played doctor, or when the boy at church said it was my time to learn what adults do, I could say no? And more importantly, they weren’t supposed to be doing this to me? Could I tell my friend about my experiences? What if my sheltering wasn’t what kept me from this terrible word my church friend had defined? What if his knowledge came from experience, like mine? Would he still be my friend if I asked him about these things, or would he see me as impure, as sinful as I knew myself to be?
My questions went unanswered, and in the end, my physical preparations all failed me. My abusers were not strangers who lurked in the night, but men and boys who were familiar to me. I would repeatedly lead them past all of my carefully placed defenses to the safety of my sanctuary. I’d keep silent.
JonBenét Ramsey’s story haunted me for years after that night in the city. I avoided her story because when I encountered it, the moment I learned of her death—the suffocating silkiness of the sleeping bag, the creak of the metal red bunk bed frame as it banged against the wall where the paint had chipped — rushed in and left me feeling ashamed and isolated.
On tabloid covers in checkout lanes, in nightly television specials, true crime videos, podcasts, and books, JonBenét Ramsey’s story, and the discourse surrounding it, still fills my daily life. While old wounds have healed and I’m no longer controlled by my past experiences, I’ve never fully examined her story. I know now that I wasn’t avoiding the who of her story, nor the what. I knew the who’s of my story, what they did, how to name it, and eventually, that it was wrong. I know now that the reason I feared JonBenét’s story was the why, a why I couldn’t examine because it might force me to encounter mine. Now, almost three decades after the first night I learned of her story, I return to her “why” in hopes that weaving our two stories together will provide insight into that question.
The Ramsey story contained the ingredients for the perfect media frenzy cocktail: parents as suspects, allegations of sexual abuse and incest, stranger danger, and above all, a large portfolio of highly sexualized beauty pageant photos. Pop culture in the U.S. heavily values images, so the beauty pageant photos of JonBenét are pivotal to the perpetuation of the Ramsey story, and thus my constant proximity to it. In the popular discourse around the widely circulated pageant photos, I find JonBenét transformed into a symbol. She represents both a vixen and a victim. Her green eyes reveal a girl forced to dress up and parade around on stage for the scrutiny and pleasure of adults. To others, those same eyes belonged to a girl who loved stage life, a girl who beckoned the lascivious gazes of adults by getting dolled up, a girl complicit in her own murder.
In one photograph from my childhood, I stand in a stuffy shoulder-padded suit and tie with my hair brushed neatly for Sunday church. Had the trajectory of my life been a linear movement from assault to death as I had feared, would the press have circulated this photo of me? How would those who view this photo interpret it? Would I simply be seen as an innocent child dressed in my Sunday best? There are photographs of me playing dress-up with my sister. In them, I wear floral-print crinoline dresses with my hair pulled into a side ponytail. Others show me dressed up as Judy Garland in my grandmother’s elegant fur coats, muffs, and lavish fascinators. I enjoyed having adults tell me how finely dressed I was. If the press circulated one of these photos from my childhood, would they have accused me of beckoning the attention of adults, of having been complicit in my abuse?
Other photos from this time show me wearing a long dirty tee, tired from playing, sitting in a pile of freshly raked leaves, or reading in a tree, or posing happily on Halloween with my cousins. These photos add context to the other photos and together form a fuller picture of my childhood, one full of mundanity. The press could have circulated any photo of JonBenét or shared additional ones next to the sensational ones for context. But she was never shown in a pile of leaves, a long dirty tee shirt, or a tree, reading. Even if she had these things, the photos would still not represent the full truths of our childhoods. I have a chance to correct this fallacy, to add context to the various photographs of my youth. JonBenét cannot add context to her story; she doesn’t hold the small gift of memory.
The widely shared beauty pageant photographs of JonBenét do not present the real girl behind the glamor, nor her stolen mundanity. These photographs present only a fantasy, a projection of a girl who never really existed. The pageant photos, and the discourse surrounding them, paint JonBenét as the ultimate symbol of the impossible, ideal standard for girls. All good children should be docile, beautiful, white, wealthy, and belonging to a doting family with enough privilege to keep their home life private from the small circles of society they inhabit.
In the discourse surrounding her case, the pageant photos of JonBenét, as symbolic cultural artifacts, do more than just present gender ideals; they hide more sinister workings. In representing standard gender ideals and the alleged loss of those ideals to strangers, her images do serious rhetorical work. Suddenly, she becomes the emblem of national anxieties: strangers coming to infiltrate the sacred privacy of homes, destroy childhood innocence, and break families apart. Images of JonBenét reinforce the idea that society must protect girls and keep them locked away from all that threatens their docility. And that includes bad children, children who are not wealthy, not white, not docile, and children who deserve only adjustment, removal, and eradication.
In other conversations around other stories like JonBenét’s, I find horror feigned at the death of a child no one knows, while the same people eagerly consume her image. Simultaneously, I find images of other living girls and women published next to dead ones, mugshots of their killers, mostly men, next to stories about the sexual violence they inflicted, surrounded by comments dissecting the crime scene images, the clothing the women were wearing, their bodies, the intimate and horrific details of the crimes. Taken together, these images blur the boundary between real-life horror and sexual fantasy.
The sheer repetition of stories like JonBenét’s and their ready consumption gives the impression that there is value in the murder and abuse of girls and women. That the discussions, arguments, and theories surrounding true crime stories focus on the lurid details of individual crimes and not on the critique of systemic socio-cultural patterns of sexual violence and femicide, nor on the failure of the criminal legal system to prevent them, tells me that men can and should get away with these crimes, as they bolster so many intersecting systems, structures, and audiences. Legislators pass laws enabling families to control children and defund social services that support them, all in the name of protecting the wealthy, white, girl body. These policies, which are part of the theater of stranger danger discourse, endanger children by isolating them in their homes, where Lego fortresses can become wine cellars, tombs. JonBenét as a symbol becomes the sacrifice used to sustain this system. Her story becomes a dark illustration of the consumption of the violence and abuse inflicted on girls and women.
I abandon the photos in hopes that the context and interpretative potential of documentaries will add depth to the discourse around JonBenét’s story. I find only the sad repetition of a tired theme. In one documentary, I find the story of the unsolvable, perfect murder mystery. Others explore the forensics surrounding the case — the ransom note, the broken basement window, the autopsy, the DNA, and the family’s financial standing. Another documentary perpetuates several family dynamic tropes, including the mommy dearest, secretive father, perfect daughter, and quiet older sibling caricatures. All of the documentaries ponder who could have killed her and how they got away with it, but never why the murder happened, or why we continue to consume media about it. In all of these documentaries, I find only the ultimate dead white girl used to induce fear and reinforce the same negative stereotypes and cultural myths that affected me as a child and continue to affect me today.
One documentary stands out from the rest. The documentary follows the casting process for a film about the Ramsey murder scandal. Denver-area actors audition for the roles of the real people involved in the case, and producers interview them about their memories and thoughts about the murder case. I was initially intrigued by the concept of the documentary because combining oral history with the casting process could create a unique approach to narrative structure and issues of voice and memory. Rather quickly, however, I find the documentary to be as exploitative as other renditions of JonBenét’s story.
In addition to being interviewed about their thoughts and memories of the Ramsey case, the producers ask the auditioning actors to reveal their negative and potentially traumatic experiences. One actor recalls the morning he found his girlfriend dead beside him in bed. An actress describes her brother’s murder in Colorado Springs. Another actress reveals that her alcoholic father abused her as a child and lodged an axe into her skull. In the most grotesque scene, the actor auditioning for a cop spends the interview discussing proper flogging and other BDSM techniques.
The auditions begin after the interviews. The Patsy actresses recreate her 911 call. The actors portraying John reenact finding JonBenét’s shrouded body. The performers’ past traumatic experiences entangle with JonBenét’s and her family’s while their emotional responses heighten the drama that unfolds for the viewers. The frantic 911 call thus summons the memories of one actress’s dead brother. Finding the blanket on the floor of the wine cellar recalls one actor’s dead girlfriend.
The auditioning children do not escape being exploited for the documentary. In one disturbing scene, the children auditioning for the role of Burke try to smash a watermelon with a baseball bat. The actors and producers speculate whether Burke could have had the strength to murder his sister. In another equally carnivalesque scene, producers have the children auditioning for the role of JonBenét parade around in a fake pageant, the same hypersexualized circumstance as the girl they portray.
The interviews and reenactments cast more ghosts into JonBenét’s story, and with them, the ghosts of the actors’ and viewers’ trauma haunt every reenactment as they weave together in an increasingly complex and disturbing narrative where consumerism, trauma, power, sex, and entertainment blend seamlessly.
In the movie depicting my childhood, which child would producers ask to portray my experiences, to parade around as the doll my abusers saw me as? Could they summon the taste of sweat, the fear, and the regret that sticks to you no matter how you shower? Could they convey the practiced calm of a steely face hiding bruised knees, trembling hands, and diaphragm spasms? Which children would act out my memory of going to the police, after a friend betrayed my confidence?
In that scene, I imagine a line of children left alone on a cold wooden bench for hours in a poorly lit hallway. I imagine someone leading them into a room where four faces stare back at them. The children stare at their laps, their throats dry, their voices quivering as they recount their stories. Will the officer — is it the BDSM cop? — act convincingly cold and unmoved as she files away the report in a cabinet? Can the actress convey disbelief in her voice when she says That’s fantastical? Your story sounds like a movie plot or a dream. Then, the other officers standing around the room would each voice their disbelief and speculation as to which film I might be referencing. After the police fail to help me, will the producers have the child go to three therapists just to be dismissed again?
When I tell my story now, I’m still often met with that officer’s unbroken demeanor that turned to disbelief, then to dismissal. What clever techniques would the documentary of my childhood abuse to convey that feeling? Would viewers buy the performances? The audience I finally told did not believe mine. They did not see me as an innocent girl; they did not see JonBenét.
Casting JonBenét reveals and perpetuates dominant cultural assumptions about gendered violence, its presentation, and performance. On a base level, the film illustrates the ways that the dominant culture does not trust victims and survivors of abuse and assault. Instead, we must collect, index, and present our experiences for audiences to speculate upon, interrogate, and interpret in hopes that they will find our testimony credible. We must allow this process to happen, and perform our parts to an acceptable standard, a standard we can never fully meet.
In the end, I wish I never examined JonBenét’s story. Fancy packaging doesn’t change what her story says to me, what I learned from that newscast when I was 6. JonBenét, in the static perfection of a beauty pageant photo, unsullied by the violence that befell her, stands as the image that all girls should embody. She was my emblem, all I wanted to be as a child, the fantasy perfection I should seek to emulate now. As a little transgender girl, the same age as she was, with the same blonde hair, wishing I could wear the clothes she was wearing, striving towards girl always felt as though I was striving towards death. Inundated with true crime stories like hers, it’s hard to feel any different.
Ultimately, JonBenét Ramsey transforms into a dark omen for what lies ahead for me. My trauma will not disappear because it is not allowed to. I, too, must remain the unwitting sacrifice to a system sustained by the performance, interpretation, and criticism of women’s bodily memory. To maintain the myth of the innocent girl, I must never begin to detangle the frightful from the quotidian, assault from affection, shame from pleasure. I cannot give up her ghost. I must remain forever haunted by JonBenét’s trauma as it entangles in the phantom traces of mine. I must perform my part.
In an old silver photo album tucked in the back pocket of a larger one, I find a photo of myself that I thought was lost. I am six years old, standing in my grandparents’ living room on the brown shag carpet in front of the old box television. I am wearing the ballerina outfit from my brother’s My Size Barbie. A pair of my father’s white Haines crew socks give the illusion of breasts inside the pink sequined leotard. My blue eyes and blonde hair shine in the light. I touch the photo as if to feel the dazzling sequin, the scratchy tulle, and the wispy pink feathers. And for a moment, I do feel that time again, my small body, my father’s socks, my unencumbered smile. What happened to the girl in this photo, that girl who looks just like me, that girl who never really existed?
BEGIN AGAIN is a series of A+ personal essays running in the first half of November 2023 where writers were asked to explore a transition, a move, grief, a breakup, repeating patterns or breaking patterns, cycles and rebirth, remaking yourself, or laying out plans for the future while standing in the ashes of something you thought was forever. And wow, how they responded. We hope you enjoy these vulnerable, sensitive, always deep but sometimes surprisingly funny works, and we’re grateful for your support that allows us to continue to publish new work from our community. These essays and paying queer and trans writers for their work are things that are made possible by A+ members like you. Queer media isn’t free to make, and we’re now and always grateful that you’re an A+ member.
-Nico
I headed to Salthill for my first post-op swim on July 28th, 2023. I had top surgery earlier this year, in April. I waited three months to get back to the waves. I had gotten the thing I wanted for so long, but there are things about recovery that you can’t really prepare for. When I thought about being shirtless on the beach or in the water for the first time it was fear that came first, rather than excitement. I didn’t want anyone to look at me and recognize me as “other”. I didn’t want anyone to look at me at all. My scars are still quite raised and red, a clear indicator of difference.
I’ve always loved the water. Before top surgery, when my discomfort with my body was at an all time high, swimming was the one thing I could do that gave me a sense of freedom. It felt safe to connect to my body in an environment where I could be weightless and enjoy moving with ease. I could be held by something when I was too self conscious to be touched by other people. I learned to swim in the pool at a hotel gym near the house I grew up in. My father taught me, prompted by an incident on a family holiday when I decided to launch myself into an outdoor pool. I don’t remember this happening, but the story has been told by various family members throughout the years. In some versions I’m pulled out laughing, in others my lips are blue and I’ve stopped breathing. The detail that never changes is the most important one: it wasn’t accidental. It was a choice. Of course, I recognize the danger, but there’s also a glimmer of pride when I think of the courage of baby me hurtling towards the scary thing.
My father was a kind, patient and practical man, and I was a fast learner. I would doggy paddle laps of the pool with armbands on while his steady hands held me up, and he walked alongside me. All of a sudden, he would let go and leave me flailing. We did this until his absence didn’t scare me anymore. The water held me up and took the place of his stabilising hands. When he died, I didn’t cry, the tears held in out of sheer stubbornness, or shock, or maybe both. The flood came later.
I am hard on myself for all the things I don’t remember. The day he told me about his cancer, I was sat in the living room, armchair pulled up close to the television. Try as I might, I don’t recall what I was watching. He came in from the kitchen and asked to speak to me. For some reason, instead of getting up and just turning my body, I went to the trouble of turning the chair all the way around to face him. I sometimes have a habit of making things harder than they have to be and I think this is something that frustrates people about me, but at that moment my father didn’t ask me why I bothered turning the chair, he just watched, and then we were face to face. Something in his tone or expression must have communicated the seriousness of the situation. This is where I get stuck. I can’t remember the conversation, I only have fragments of him. When I want to hear him crystal clear I think of one particular pun that always cracked him up. Whenever someone would ask him if he was alright, he would reply “No, I’m half left.” The answer’s objectively hilarious, but not helpful to me now while I try to recall the conversation that completely altered my life.
During one particular session with a therapist, we agreed to try an exercise where a chair would be placed near me. I would need to try to visualise my Dad sitting in this chair and speak to him as if he were really there. I directed my eyes to where I thought his head would likely be and tried to imagine his face, the signature gap in between his two front teeth that I loved so much. I could summon the fragments. I could imagine the clothes he might wear, and the way he would sit. Fingers coming together in a steeple and resting on his stomach, legs crossed at the ankles. I have all these different parts of him but I can’t put them together to form a clear picture of what he would look like sitting in front of me in that room, at that time. He’s an unfinished puzzle, still. I can’t get him out of my head and onto the chair. “Can you see him?” she asked me. “Are you finding this difficult?”.
To prepare for top surgery, I set up a gofundme to help with the costs. Thanks to the kindness and generosity of friends, family and community, I was able to crowdfund about half. I needed ten thousand euro in total. I took out a loan and reached the important adult milestone of getting into debt. The standard of trans healthcare in Ireland currently is extremely poor and many of us are forced to travel abroad for treatment. I chose a surgeon in Manchester, England, and added the cost of flights, accommodation, and food for two weeks to the total. I could handle the practical side of things, a handy list of bullet points that could be checked off upon completion. Once all the necessary financial, travel and accommodation plans were put in place there was nothing left to do but wait and reflect.
The grief I had (semi) successfully avoided for years found me. It was monsoon season. Despite the fact that I was surrounded by friends who loved me, and continue to love me, in surprising, beautiful ways, I felt alone. I wanted my father and his stabilising hands. I wanted him to know the name I chose for myself and to hear him say it. In reality, I have no idea how he would have reacted to my coming out. Sometimes I look back and conclude that all the signs were there and he must have known. Then I remember that I didn’t know until my mid twenties and it humbles me. What are “the signs” anyway? They only became clear to me with the gift of hindsight.
I’ve rehearsed the conversation in my head many times but I never get very far. I have no idea how I would attempt to explain my identity to him, when it doesn’t make much sense to me, either, most of the time. I’m not his daughter. I never grew into a woman. I’m not a man, but I could have been his son so easily. He knew me as a child who loved to swim, hated maths, and had an answer for everything. I held on to two out of three.
I could not accept that he would never know me as the truest, most authentic version of myself. I wanted this so desperately that I rewrote history and altered my entire belief system. I started to reject linear time and force belief in an afterlife. I spent hours stuck in March 2008, at the hospice, attempting to communicate to him everything he needed to know in the last squeeze of his hand or kiss on his forehead. In reality, I remember very little about that day he died. The weird, musty smell of the hospice. It was always too hot. My aunt and I were sitting in a communal area with sofas and a small television set. The room had clean, linoleum flooring that was a pretty aquamarine colour. Like the sea, sometimes. We were watching an episode of Desperate Housewives. For the longest time I was convinced it was “Boom Crunch”, the plane crash episode (every good TV show has a plane crash episode). I researched it for this essay, and realised that episode aired in 2009, so it couldn’t have been the one we were watching. I find myself reluctant to let go of this detail; it’s become an important part of the story, something that could transport me to the past. I convinced myself that watching it would bring back all the missing pieces. It didn’t work. I waited too long to grieve and the memories got lost. He did not know my name, and unless I can pull off an Interstellar level miracle using the power of love, he never will. I left him there in the past, and flew across the sea towards my future.
When I thought about how to describe my first time back in the water post-surgery, I knew I would struggle and words may fail me. I turn to people far more skilled than I for help. The first time I heard boygenius’ song “Anti-Curse” I knew it would stay with me for a long time. In particular, the last three lines of verse two:
“I’m swimming back
See, you don’t have to make it bad
Just ‘cause you know how”
The cold water shock brought me back to life instantly and I wondered what I had been so afraid of. I remembered that this is what I loved to do. I dunked my head beneath the waves and felt overwhelming gratitude for my body, my life, and for the man who devoted so much time to making a home for me, in and out of the water. I find it unfair that there was not much I was able to teach him in return. I am learning new things about my identity and position in the world as a queer, trans person every day. I would have loved the opportunity to figure it out with him. That day, during the exercise in my therapist’s office I only managed to mumble my way through a few cliché sentences. “Well, yes, I’m using a different name and I might look a bit different but I’m still the same person you’ve always known”. She asked me what I imagined he might say back to me. I replied that I didn’t know, but after some gentle nudging I eventually settled on something along the lines of “Well, he did love me and I imagine he wouldn’t mind as long as I was happy.”
Feature image via 10’000 Hours / Getty Images
BEGIN AGAIN is a series of A+ personal essays running in the first half of November 2023 where writers were asked to explore a transition, a move, grief, a breakup, repeating patterns or breaking patterns, cycles and rebirth, remaking yourself, or laying out plans for the future while standing in the ashes of something you thought was forever. And wow, how they responded. We hope you enjoy these vulnerable, sensitive, always deep but sometimes surprisingly funny works, and we’re grateful for your support that allows us to continue to publish new work from our community. These essays and paying queer and trans writers for their work are things that are made possible by A+ members like you. Queer media isn’t free to make, and we’re now and always grateful that you’re an A+ member.
-Nico
The foam mat lay about 1.5 inches off the stained green carpet. Actually, I’m not even sure it was green. The space between the closet and the couch — which held a life’s worth of clothes, books, appliances, toys, etc. — offered enough space for a sleeping bag and a mini nightstand made of a few books, stacked one on top of the other. Again, I can’t remember what they are, only that they were important because they held a glass of water and my phone each night. I tucked myself into my makeshift floor “bed.” It would be an outrageous stretch to call it a bed, but the intimacy I shared with the floor was truthfully very comforting. I checked my face in my phone camera, still puffy on the left side. Sure, it could’ve been a stroke, but it probably wasn’t. I put on some allergy cream my parents recommended I slather on for sleepy time. The girl from last night texted me, but I was too tired to respond.
I woke up to a toddler yelling. I checked my Google Calendar: a meeting with that woman about making that website. It’ll be about an hour drive, if not more. Then, a writing meetup. I just needed to be back on this side of town by 6:45pm for my evening teaching shift. I loaded my car up with my laptop, a spare change of clothes, and basic toiletries. I never know where the day could take me. My good friend from college suggested this collection of items as a “startup” kit to living in Los Angeles. That, plus a Costco card and the general mentality that it’s okay to neglect responsibilities if you’re offered a big break (I can still get behind this, actually). Just a few nights previous, I was watching The Proud Family on her couch, eating mini weenies and trying to drown out the sex noises coming from the other room. My suitcase hardly contained any business casual clothes, but I was going to make it work. My track record proved that I always have, even if I felt like a fragile shell at low tide.
“Hey how’s your face doing?” The text popped up on my laptop just as my hopeful future boss looked at the less-than-impressive website work I was doing. There I was, trying to convince some random lady I met at an LA entrepreneur meetup (I was not and do not plan on starting my own business) that I could fully remodel her website and use all my (nonexistent) SEO skills to give her blog a facelift whilst the girl who I made out with the evening prior was sending me — what looked like — morning after sex texts. All I could think about was her parents’ couch, lots of boobs, and the radio announcement I heard on my commute that said something like “For the first time ever, Disneyland is officially closed for COVID-19 precautions.” I didn’t believe in the seriousness of the pandemic until that moment. You can’t blame me for thinking people were just being dramatic and racist before our work and schools started shutting down. Up until this point, I was sleeping for about four hours, eating one meal a day, meeting random strangers at business, writing, food, whatever meetups — and trying to play my cards right with women I met on apps, so I didn’t have to make the two-hour drive with traffic.Yes, I was finding dates to sleep with so I could literally have a place to sleep. This frantic networking search operated as a full-time job up until COVID shut everything down. At that point, I had found a roommate through a queer housing Facebook group and decided to move into the city.
In tragic, but not surprising, news, I had to move out after a year. My roommate’s partner became physically and verbally abusive towards her so we were forced to temporarily live with my then partner until we could figure out the next safe step. Eventually, everyone was safe and I had somehow convinced my best friend to move from Seattle to live with me in an extremely small apartment another hour south of the city. We lived together for nearly two years. We are no longer friends. I think he blocked me on all socials.
Quiet nights of passive conversation and whispered phone calls led to my final move in LA: a nice(r) neighborhood where I could live with an older married couple I met through my very progressive liberal church. I also simultaneously started a full-time job in addition to school AND two other gigs I had. There just wasn’t any time to sort out my own feelings, let alone the feelings of someone with whom I had a long, complex, and strained relationship. So, I thought living with a childless couple in their 50s and their dog might make me a more stable person.
One random day in July three months later, I was crashing. Overwhelmed by the half-unpacked boxes around me, a TV nightstand held up by my plastic box of books, and malnourished from my resurgence of what seems to be a stress-induced eating disorder, I stared up at the ceiling, admitting to my emotional crash. All in the same moment, I realized: I was being sexually harassed by my 50+ year old male roommate, I couldn’t work a full-time job, hold three part time gigs, and be in school full time, I couldn’t pay my bills, and couldn’t actually build a life in a city that was never meant to nurture someone as Midwestern as myself.
The first thing I remember after this moment is being at my aunt’s house in Cleveland, ceaselessly sobbing to her and my eight-year-old cousin about how I needed to leave, how I needed to restart my life and get out of Los Angeles, but how I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t begin again, again (again). I had already done it too many times. I’m stuck, I’m drained, I’m tired, I’m broke, and where do I go with my life if I have nowhere to go? So, in a matter of two weeks I flew back to Los Angeles, packed up some of my belongings, gave most of them away, left my whole fish tank with live fish inside them at the house, and made a four day cross country road trip over Labor Day, so that my full-time California job wouldn’t know I now live in a completely different state.
Car stuffed to the brim; I left while the male roommate was away at work. The other roommate waved nervously from the front yard, clearly stressed, with body language that suggested she was not-so-secretly angry with me. I didn’t care. I drove so fast away from her, that house, that man, that job, those lost friends, those queer dance parties, that supportive church, the community I created, without a single sound. Notifying only a few people a few nights prior, I silently headed towards Tucson, AZ: the first night’s stop across the country and a place I had frantically moved to just four years prior for a volunteer year working with unhoused teenagers. I wondered what they were up to, now that they were adults. Did he ever get his dream job as a tattoo artist? Did she graduate high school? Did he start saving up to take that trip to China, he always told me about every morning when I got to work?
With three weeks until graduation, I made the abrupt decision not to go to England for graduate school and, instead, do this volunteer year. Caught between my love for academia and my “calling” to work for social justice, I was torn between how to spend the most important year of my whole entire life, the year after I graduated from college. As I drove to Ozona, TX I thought about this feeling of being “called” to something. This was language I picked up from my college education and short stint of wanting to be a nun. For something to be real and true for me, I had to feel like a divine presence was guiding me in that direction. While this divine being has changed over the years, the behavior still rings true. If I want to be somewhere new, then I must be called to that something new. Some greater authority than me must give me a sign. I cannot be trusted.
Maybe the sign was that the girl I had a crush on was also doing this year of service, or maybe the sign was feeling an immense amount of guilt about the mere privilege I had to be able to just move to England. I followed the “signs” (feelings) and made the sudden switch. Moving to Los Angeles was guided by these “signs” (my friend saying, “maybe you should stay”), deciding to move to England after this year of service came with “signs” (scribbled ideas of a thesis in my notebook), and even moving to my current location, Orlando, was led by “signs” (telling myself “you’re broke and unwell”). I passed the dusty, sun-drenched desert clay for hours as I watched the left side of my arm get sunburnt through the window and thought about all the signs that justified me being in that car, passing through border security, turning off my AC in fear that my car would break down in the heat, friendships I’d given up on, the community I built from scratch that I simply left behind (in Arizona, in England, in Los Angeles).
When I arrived in Ozona around 11pm the feeling of being called quickly morphed into temporary regret. I texted my best friend “This seems like the kind of place I would get hate-crimed in.” I parked under the one and only light in the hotel parking lot and decided not to get food despite my growling stomach. The only place that was open had large, white, drunk men gathered outside the doors. Maybe I followed the signs wrong. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be here. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to even move. When I woke up the next morning I was relieved to see my car not broken into and pretty much forgot about the existential crisis I endured the night before.
The stint to Louisiana was saturated in condensation and rich soil, views I used to ride by every morning on the way to elementary school. The small rain clouds passing over me every hour or so brought a coziness to the home I now called my Honda Civic. I missed rain, which felt like an ironic thought because just a few years previous the non-stop rain of Northern England used to make me feel like I was suffocating in my own despair.
Before I had a more legitimate, authoritative entity labeling me as mentally ill, I looked back on my move to England as a time where my spirit guides misled me (or maybe intentionally led me) to a place destined to ruin me. I spent the better part of a year making exactly two friends and putting every part of my being into a relationship with a woman who would eventually cost me thousands of dollars in therapy. The June before I was slated to finish my thesis, a friend came to visit me in England and noticed I hadn’t been sleeping or eating for days. She noted how I couldn’t make it through even one hour without crying. Just the week prior my girlfriend had convinced me to move out of a house with three seemingly “normal” roommates into the closet of a suspiciously strange old woman and her teenage son who was only sometimes there and never actually acknowledged me. I still have the photo my visiting friend took of me the day I realized (she told me) things were bad. I had clearly been crying for hours and I was about to take a bite into one of my favorite vegan donuts. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even finish the donut. I was becoming a skeleton, and my friend encouraged me to call my family and practically beg for help (the family I had just come out to before leaving for England who wouldn’t speak to me). It was the one and only time I remember crying to my dad. He clearly listened because he helped me fly back to Ohio. I looked in the rearview at the boxes and trash bags in my car. I had to get rid of so much to do this, even more so than when I abruptly left England. When I left England, I had to pay rent to that woman for a few months to hold my stuff until I could eventually come back to get it, retraumatize myself, and actually say goodbye to the two friends I had. If I was still in possession of all this stuff (a Himalayan salt lamp, a food processor, a super cute European wardrobe, etc.) maybe I could’ve saved my money instead of buying all of these things all over again in every city. But I didn’t have my collection then, I don’t have it now, and I’m still mourning the three years worth of crafting materials I had to give away that I was saving for a hopeful craft room in a hopeful house I would’ve bought from a hopeful magic income I was going to get.
The last leg from Louisiana to Orlando was a Hail Mary lap on my way to my ideation of the promised land. It was the place I was going to get my shit together, the place I was going to get my craft room. The main feeling was shame. Instead of feeling “the call” (because honestly who is getting “called” to live in Florida?) it was a logical decision based on facts my aunt literally wrote on a white board for me to see. I was giving in to go live with my sister, someone who has seemingly had her shit together her whole life. She was going to help me and I hated myself for it. The pull to live here was more the instructional guide my aunt created and friends endorsed to help stabilize me, my emotions, my health, my finances, and my living situation. I was the most uneasy about it because there was no divine presence. It simply felt like I had channeled my Virgo moon and rising to say “cut the shit and let the math do it’s mathing.”
It was my Aquarius side that brought commitment issues. All of my relationships and situationships had only ever last a few months. I can’t stay at a job for longer than ten months. I’ll promise you I’m coming to your birthday party and then give some grandiose excuse as to why I’m suddenly in crisis and can’t come. I’ll even purchase $400 Yosemite festival tickets a year in a half in advance with friends I no longer have because I genuinely believe I can somehow make it happen. Part of this I write off as being a flighty Aquarius. Maybe my constant movement is my way of chasing life’s greatest adventures (many fringe social media acquaintances would certainly agree). Some of it has to do with my competing values. A lot of it has to do with the chemical imbalances in my brain that require me to be on a high dosage of mood stabilizers. But most of it is a lack of trust in myself. Here I am, connecting the dots with you, painting the picture of my addiction to starting over.
Starting over comes with loss, grief, transition, and a new language or pattern to learn about what’s to come. Some of us become empowered by our choices to start over. Sure, I had the choice to not move to LA and stay home with my parents. I had the choice to stay in LA and not move to Orlando. I had the choice to stay in a toxic relationship and live in England. Without the high dose of mood stabilizers I’m currently on, none of these moves were choices. Nothing in my brain chemistry was stable enough to recognize wiser, less catastrophic options. I felt trapped in my own lack of choices and toxic circumstances. Beginning again has offered me new lives on ten different timelines where each version of me still somehow ends up flying off into a new life where the old one burns down. I keep running to new places to restart, only to be struck by the cycle and have to flee from the consequences of my own doing. It’s easier to blame it on my brain than to admit the common thread is a deep mistrust of my own authority. All of these moves ended in disaster, right? I can’t trust myself to make the next decisions, so who is there to turn to now that every decision I’ve ever made is objectively wrong?
Pulling into my sister’s apartment complex should’ve brought a sigh of relief, but I was still on edge because of the lack of divine signs. I wanted to validate myself about being there at that moment in Orlando, Florida with her. However, the next morning she spent the whole day carrying the contents of my stuff car up four flights of stairs until we were both out of breath. Two of my aunts called to check up on me to make sure I was settled. My cousin sent me voice messages assuring me I did the right thing. My parents seemed relieved I was finally safe with a family member.
I lay on the blow-up air mattress the rest of the week thinking about all the things I’ve run away from and realized almost all of them had to do with some sort of relationship imploding. The “call,” or sense of fulfilling my own destiny, drew me towards some abrupt moves while the feeling of a failed relationship triggered my avoidant attachment style and flight response. I’ve always known what I’ve been running away from, but it felt like it was with the understanding that I was following some sort of “sign” from the gods as a valid reason to move towards something else. It never occurred to me that I’ve been running towards the feeling of family the entire time. In the case of Orlando, I was literally running towards family. While I live with my sister, a big part of the move was how much easier it would be to travel home to Ohio to visit my dying grandparents. The move to Los Angeles was to find the chosen queer family I’ve been looking for, only to discover on my own hero’s journey that (some parts) of my given family are the queer affirming people I’ve been looking for the whole time. The move to England was my more delusional choice to find an English woman to marry and settle down with in a little cottage in the hills, a dream I kinda fulfilled for a few months. The move to Arizona was to live in an intentional community (their phrase for commune) dedicated to simply living. Each time I fell into the pit of despair a new move would inevitably drag me into, I reached for a family member (aunt, other aunt, uncle, cousin, other cousin, papa, other grandma) who eventually got me back on track. The invisible string tying my running shoes together is the pull towards family, which early 20s Em would’ve scoffed at. For me, this has looked like running towards a few select extended family members and a very specific few friends I’ve grown to trust over many years. This past year in Orlando has reminded me to hold tightly to these very sacred relationships because they’re the relationships that reinforce my decisions to trust myself.
While I certainly don’t completely trust myself in major decisions based on the evidence in, I don’t know, this entire essay, these people have slowly taught me to make choices in a space where I’m not being harassed or feeling unsafe or actively going through a housing crisis. They’ve nurtured me towards a more solid version of myself. Right now, I feel like I can make choices that will make me a better person. I can recognize the crazy cycle of mood instability that often escalates an impulsive decision that could’ve been avoided entirely. I can say “no” to things that seem far out. Most importantly, I can live with the knowledge that spontaneous moves and highs and lows will come again, but maybe moving forward I’ll have the learned wisdom that I can trust myself.
There’s this tattoo I’ve been wanting for years. It’s the Burmese script of our family name, “Win.” A few of my relatives have it in various places on their arms. Every holiday that I travel home to Ohio, I ensure my cousins I will get it, and every holiday I back out. Not because of the pain. Not because of the price. Not even necessarily because I’ve never gotten a tattoo before. What if this is impulsive and I realize I made a huge mistake? The idea of this tattoo hangs with the weight of trusting myself, knowing that, no, even if I don’t get it, or I make drastic mistakes, or I trust myself and regret it, these select family members are always there instilling trust in me. They’re there telling me I’m more than my medication, labels, and altered brain chemicals. They’ve always reflected a trust in myself I can’t always see. While I can’t fully trust myself just yet, I can trust the one thing that has never steered me wrong: family.
Feature image via Carol Yepes / Getty Images
BEGIN AGAIN is a series of A+ personal essays running in the first half of November 2023 where writers were asked to explore a transition, a move, grief, a breakup, repeating patterns or breaking patterns, cycles and rebirth, remaking yourself, or laying out plans for the future while standing in the ashes of something you thought was forever. And wow, how they responded. We hope you enjoy these vulnerable, sensitive, always deep but sometimes surprisingly funny works, and we’re grateful for your support that allows us to continue to publish new work from our community. These essays and paying queer and trans writers for their work are things that are made possible by A+ members like you. Queer media isn’t free to make, and we’re now and always grateful that you’re an A+ member.
-Nico
“Are you too sick or injured to work?”
It should be an easy question. “Yes or no?” But my health isn’t that binary.
I recently lost my main source of work and income via a round of lay-offs at the remote non-profit where I’d been working for almost four years. During that time I’d developed new chronic symptoms that had dramatically changed my life, making it impossible to do basic tasks like showering or cooking without either help, or a lot of time to recover after. Now, my state’s unemployment form was asking me to say whether I’m too sick to work, and giving me an existential crisis. First, I didn’t want to accidentally disqualify myself from unemployment benefits, but I also didn’t want to say that I’m well enough to work when I’m not sure about that either. A few days ago, I got an email from a chronic illness advocacy non-profit saying that 25% of people with one of my chronic illnesses are too sick to work. Could I be part of that?
The truth is that I had taken more sick leave at my job than most employers would be willing to tolerate. I had recently been out sick for two weeks and returned to work with a doctor’s note requesting reasonable accommodations to adjust my schedule to manage ongoing symptoms.
Maybe I am too sick to work. But I don’t think I know how to stop.
I am often mistaken for a highly detail-oriented Type A overachiever when in reality I’m a big-picture, artsy type who can’t focus on one thing for too long before a shiny new idea distracts me. I trained myself to appear that way. Before I knew I was queer or that I was born with a rare genetic condition that makes my joints dislocate and puts me at high risk for developing other rare conditions, I just knew that I was different from everyone in my hometown, and that I didn’t like it. I knew I wanted to get out and far away as soon as I possibly could. But my family didn’t have the money to send me to the sort of colleges that, according to y2k logic, would help me get the kind of job I needed to be able to escape. My mom worked in customer service and my dad always worked two jobs. I realized that if I wanted to be like the handful of people who got out of this small town, I would have to get a scholarship. If I wanted a scholarship I would need to maintain an impressive GPA, do all of the extracurriculars I could fit in my schedule, and take every AP class my school offered. Working backwards, it meant I’d have to start my plan to become a perfect, top-of-the-class-scholarship-earner when I was very young. The system was rigged to decide which students would “succeed” starting in elementary school. Fourth through sixth grade report cards determined whether teachers recommended students for honors classes in junior high. Junior high grades then determined if you stayed in honors in high school, which gave your GPA a bump and set you on a path towards taking AP classes for college credit. I carefully calculated a plan to be exactly what the teachers wanted me to be.
By the time I finished high school I still hadn’t come to terms with my queerness (because witnessing classmates getting bullied was enough to silence me), but my genetic condition had certainly reared its head and introduced me to ableism. I spent most of high school dislocating and spraining every joint in my body to the point that the gym teachers accused me of faking injuries to get out of class. I dislocated my knee, tore many ligaments, and chipped my kneecap in the winter of my senior year and spent the next six months in a wheelchair getting tormented and bullied by both students and staff, who again accused me of faking. A classmate’s mother asked me if my doctor knew I was using a wheelchair and suggested I would do better to simply “walk it off.” Another classmate’s mother told me her son had knee surgery and was fine afterwards, as if there is only one type of knee injury and surgery. The same gym teacher who had accused me of faking in the past now tried to get me expelled for what she claimed was failing to thank bus drivers for helping me get in and out of buses. (This doesn’t seem like a reason to expel a student even if it had been true, but importantly, my dad was the school bus driver and she never thanked him for anything.) I missed out on a lot of senior class activities because they weren’t accessible. I became further isolated from friends who didn’t seem to know how to talk to me now that I was in a wheelchair. When it came time for graduation and awards ceremonies, I reveled in the validation that I was better than all of the people who had harassed me and tried to kick me out of school.
“Oh you want to kick me out of the school? That’s right I am in the National Honor Society and I did win that prestigious scholarship fund. Have you seen the book my poem was just published in?”
“Oh You think I’m faking it? Please see my name on the plaque in the lobby, it says I’m the most open-minded student in the graduating class (yes that was a real scholarship award I got from an anti-bullying campaign). Perhaps you could take a lesson from me on discrimination and bullying?”
“Oh, your son was fine after his knee surgery? Was your son ranked fifth in his class of hundreds of students?”
At the choir’s senior concert, I proudly chose Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” as my senior solo. I stared directly into the audience, trying to see their reactions as I defiantly sang “trying hard to reach out but when I tried to speak out felt like no one could hear me wanted to belong here but something felt so wrong here so, I prayed I could break away.”
And this learned perfectionism wasn’t limited to academics. I got my first under-the-table job at a Yogi Bear themed campground where I dressed up as Yogi and Cindy bears when I was about thirteen years old. I worked entry level jobs during college and ran a blog on the side. I got my first “adult” job at an activist non-profit by approaching the application process with the mantra “be so good they can’t ignore you” and creating what my future-boss called the longest application sample project he had ever seen.
Then I proceeded be the best activist that I could be, to give everything I had to the cause. I couldn’t afford an apartment in expensive Washington, DC but I wanted to be the first person to arrive and the last person to leave the office. I got up before the sun to travel an hour and a half by bus and metro. I came back after dark, microwaved a frozen meal, watched one episode of a show on my laptop, and went to bed. I regularly skipped lunch so that I could keep working and I unintentionally lost weight in the first month of the job. I answered emails on the weekends and monitored social media posts like I was responding to a crisis that didn’t actually exist. I had no time for friends, hobbies, or anything fun because I was always commuting, at work, or still working on my days off. My big project was a huge climate march in New York City that was promised to be historic in nature and I had taken on that promise as if it was my personal duty to deliver. When the march finally arrived, my jaw hurt so badly I could barely open my mouth and had to rely on soups and smoothies to eat. I developed a pain in my chest that had me convinced that I was having a heart attack and I had to go to an urgent care. It turned out to be a condition called costochondritis where the cartilage in your rib cage becomes inflamed. It hurt to breathe or move my arms but, at least, the march was historic. I got to frame the front pages of The New York Times and USA Today and hang them above my desk to show everyone how perfect it had been.
I have never stopped working, achieving, and perfecting. And I burnt myself into the ground. More chronic illnesses have materialized alongside the stress and burnout. The more chronic illnesses I developed and the more disabled I became, the more impossible it became to appear perfect.
This world is not built for bodies like mine and I have spent hundreds of hours I will never get back arguing, calling, emailing, faxing (yes, faxing) and filling out forms to request the most basic access needs: a ramp or elevator so I can enter a building, a parking spot with room for my mobility scooter, an accommodation letter for work, a chair a at a standing room only concert, a hotel room with space for my mobility scooter, a bathroom with handlebars so I don’t fall. I know because I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on medical care only to see doctors who don’t know how to or don’t want to help me. I know because it feels like I’m the only one still wearing a mask trying to protect myself from a virus that might kill me. I know because I have done the emotional labor to try to educate people who call themselves progressive activists on the basics of ableism. And I have done all of this with a lot less energy and more pain than most people my age.
I could never actually be perfect. No one can, but for decades perfectionism served as both a tool to eventually separate myself from and a shield to protect me from ableism and homophobia. I might have a body that literally can’t keep itself together, but maybe I could try to be the most accomplished person in the room. I might not be capable of walking sometimes, but have you noticed how smart, well-spoken and put-together I am? I’m such a good disabled person, the heroic kind.
It wasn’t all bad. Perfectionism got me where I am. It took me thousands of miles away from my hometown bullies to live in a place that I love. It helped me meet my partner, come out, fall in love, and get married. It gave me enough money to adopt and care for my dog who brings me a lot of joy and who I’m starting to train to be a service dog. It gave me a chance to access medical care and get diagnoses and treatments. It brought me to progressive spaces where I could learn about ableism, capitalism, cisheteronormativity, and how they were harming me. But now the strategy I had used to survive was making me sicker and preventing me from getting the rest and medical care I truly needed. Getting laid-off forced me to question this perfectionism head-on in the context of everything I had learned since leaving my hometown. It brought me to the edge of a cliff and gave me a choice. I could either turn back around, start my job search, and keep trying to force myself to be perfect. Or I could consider the terrifying but real possibility that I am too sick to keep up that lie and jump — without knowing where or how I would land.
My spouse and I decided to jump off the cliff. I’m not looking for a new full-time job and we’re downsizing to a smaller apartment in a cheaper area when our lease ends. Hopefully I’ll get approved for state unemployment but we don’t know. We just know that I need to do this either way. We joke that I’m going to be a stay-at-home dog mom, imagining an alternate reality where I live a Real Housewives lifestyle and that I’m choosing not to work out of privilege. It’s easier than acknowledging that this is truly a decision coming from desperation and ableism. I cannot keep sacrificing my body to capitalism, ableism, and the things these systems require of “productive” people. I cannot keep trying to be the perfect non-profit activist fighting for a vision of liberation that fails to genuinely include the disability community.
So what now?
My first week unemployed I wrote myself a checklist of all the things I wanted to accomplish that week: the doctors I would call, housework I would do, creative projects I would start on, the physical therapy routine I would complete. One by one, I checked off each item, but at the end of the week I didn’t feel proud or accomplished. I felt tired. In the face of free time, an empty schedule, and a lack of an answer to the question “so what do you do?,” I replaced one job with another. I created goals and tasks with artificial deadlines and managed myself into perfection. I was going to be the Perfect Disabled Person with a checklist to prove I wasn’t one of those “bad lazy disabled people” you hear about. I even briefly considered writing myself a work plan with SMART goals (I wish I was making that up, but sadly it’s true). While I do have a lot of medical needs to manage, I realized I was just trying to rebuild all the stressful systems I had had at work. But the systems of capitalism and burnout culture are not going to heal my body. If anything, they’ve contributed to the problem.
So I did what any millennial queer would do: I talked to my therapist. She gave me a meditation card from the The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck by Tricia Hersey that said “I will imagine what my body needs. I will daydream for freedom.” I wrote each sentence on the top of a page in a journal and used it as a journaling prompt to try to work through what freedom and listening to what my body needs could mean. When I got to freedom, my brain promptly responded like it was a word association exercise in a way I didn’t expect. “Freedom is money,” it said. Over and over. Excuse me?! How is it possible that my queer, disabled, feminist, anti-capitalist, non-profit worker self could believe that freedom is money? This makes no fucking sense!
But deep down that voice made perfect sense. It made perfect sense because I was bullied, harassed, and physically assaulted where I grew up. My family didn’t have the financial resources to send me to another school. I had spent decades working towards a salary that would let me live in a more diverse place where I could find more people like myself. And to be honest, even though I love and trust my spouse and feel lucky to have someone who supports me taking the time I need to care for myself, the idea of intentionally leaving the workforce and relying on my partner as a one-income household is terrifying. I never wanted to feel stuck again. Money was the tool that let my fight or flight response know that this time I could take flight if I needed to. Even now, my list of creative projects I want to do in my free time, around all the medical appointments and treatments, includes some way to eventually make money. I could write a book and eventually maybe sell it. I could design new products for my queer Etsy store. I could start a Youtube channel or a blog about disability rights and monetize it. FUCK. I don’t know how to turn it off.
I decided that maybe I needed to reframe the word and think about what I wanted freedom from, instead of the word freedom on its own. Something decidedly different comes to mind here: pressure, expectations, productivity, schedules, rules, timelines, capitalism, what other people think is normal. But the second I felt like maybe I was starting to break away from the idea that freedom equals money I wrote down that perhaps financial freedom could be less about how much money I make and more about how often I work and where I make money. It sounded like a good idea, but then I immediately felt pressure to figure out other ways to make money without eventually going back to a full-time job and that felt overwhelming, not freeing. Again, I don’t know how to turn it off.
I tried to be very intentional about turning off the perfectionist, goal-oriented, financial freedom-focused mindset by buying things meant for children. When I was a kid, my grandmother kept a drawer at her house for me of random scraps of materials and objects she found. I loved going to the drawer when I visited to see what was inside and coming up with imaginative craft projects by combining random things like paper lunch bags, straws, scraps of leftover fabric, twist ties, and paint. I would make little gifts for my family like miniature Easter baskets I made entirely out of paper. And though I’m sure they would have humored me if I tried, I never asked anyone to pay me for it. I did it because it brought me joy. So I bought several craft kits from Five Below with plans to create and decorate something that had nothing to do with being perfect, making money, meeting a goal or deadline. I wanted to remind myself what it was like to just simply be in the moment, creating for the sheer pleasure of it.
Before these items arrived I got very sick. I mean, I’m already very sick but I got an acute respiratory infection with an intense cough and overwhelming exhaustion. It forced me to stop working on medical goals like scheduling appointments and doing physical therapy. Ironically, it forced me to stop trying to figure out how to stop working and to just actually stop working. Since I don’t have a job it was the first time in years that I allowed myself to truly rest because I didn’t need to debate whether or not I had enough sick days to manage my chronic illness and this acute infection. I didn’t have to wonder how I would get by if I used up all of my sick days now and got an autoimmune flare up from this infection. (Can employers please stop with the limited sick days? It is unfair to people with chronic illness and caretakers.) I could sleep twelve hours straight and then fall asleep again on the couch while watching a movie. I could simply listen to my body.
I am still recovering from this infection and the complications that come with getting sick when you are chronically ill, but I am starting to feel a little more like myself each day. I can’t rush back into my checklists because I developed an asthmatic cough that makes breathing difficult whenever I try to do anything besides sit quietly still. My body forced me to experience what it actually looks like to rest without the need for productivity or perfectionism. I know the hard part is going to be remembering this when I recover. I could easily try to “make up for lost time” and steamroll my way through my checklists.
Instead, I’m going to try to keep giving myself time to rest as well as time for joy – like finally doing the craft kits I ordered before I got sick. I want to set limits on how much I try to “achieve” in one day or how many hours I spend being “productive” so that I don’t get carried away. I want to buy the entire deck of Tricia Hersey’s Nap Ministry cards, frame them, and hang them around my new down-sized apartment. I want to try not to get too wrapped up in having the perfect move where everything is packed in a precise manner and unpacked by a certain deadline. I want to try to remember that lying in bed all day napping, reading, or watching a movie is perfectly acceptable. I need to remind myself that even resting can’t be perfect and it doesn’t have to look a certain way. Decades of learning the ableist, capitalist, white-supremacist ways to be the perfect, productive, high-achiever aren’t going to be undone by a few weeks of having a bad acute infection, but it’s a start.