Both my parents are the oldest of three, with two younger brothers. When my mother found out she was pregnant, she thought the talk of “their son” was due to this: that they had both experienced babies as being boys, and thus defaulted to the idea that so, too, would theirs be.

But while this was true for why my mother originally believed that she must be carrying a son, I don’t think this was true for my father. When my mother happily called her own father to tell him the news — that she was pregnant, that it was going to be a girl — my father turned to her and said, “Is he excited?” When my mother replied that yes, of course he was, that both he and my grandmother were shouting in excitement over the phone from Poland, he scoffed. “He must be lying. He’s got to be disappointed it’s not a boy.”

Because to my father, this was the tacit code among men: that a daughter was fine and good, if she preceded or succeeded a son. Daughters were sources of “daddy’s girl” affection, and procurers of son-in-laws with whom one could barbecue and bond. A daughter will care for you in old age, fret and fuss about you taking your vitamins, while a son will be out in the world spreading your (however puffed up or imagined) legacy.

This is not so much bitter postulation as it is a direct recounting of what my father would often say on the topic. A male family member had had three daughters, and divorced his wife when she refused to find out the sex of the baby before having an abortion; three children was enough. How dare she: If it was a boy, she had no right.

My parents divorced a few months after I was born. I don’t have many early memories, or many memories of childhood at all. In the classic family unit, children arrive into a domestic universe that is well-established: the family home, the family dynamic, the external support structure of extended family, the rules, the beliefs, the time dinner is served. However, when you are born into a time of extreme upheaval in two people’s respective lives, you join them in the upheaval, and participate in two completely separate laws of physics. In the land of my mother, my girlhood was celebrated in the socially dictated gender-role ways: Spice Girls cassette tapes and funky dresses. In the land of my father, there was anger and confusion.

In all of my baby photos, I am covered in frills and ruffles. But while no one can refuse a baby girl, teenage girls are different: further away from lap candy and closer to nuisance. So by the time I approached the 4th grade, as the awkwardness of adolescence was slowly approaching, the lovable pigtails of babyhood were over. There was a shift: Suddenly, my hair had been cut short and I was in corduroys and rugby polos at all times.

No one can refuse a baby girl, but teenage girls are different: further away from lap candy and closer to nuisance.
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One day, on the last day of school in June, there was a fair of sorts on the asphalt basketball court. I got my hair spray-painted blue. I had eaten a firecracker popsicle, because I remember going to the bathroom and sticking out my blue tongue in the mirror and hissing like a blue dragon. My dad had planned a camping trip on Bull’s Island as the first order of summer; we pulled out of the parking lot of the fair and drove straight there. A few hours later we were on the rocky beach, and my dad threw a towel at me and gestured to kids playing in the water. I rummaged around in the bag he had packed for my swimsuit. It wasn’t there.

“Where’s my swimsuit?” I had asked.

“Guess I forgot,” he shrugged. “Just go in with your shorts.”

I paused, unsure what he was suggesting. “And a shirt?”

“No,” he said. “You don’t need that yet.” He pointed to my flat chest. I was 9.

“I’ll wear a shirt,” I said.

“No you won’t.”

I still don’t know why he obstinately refused to let me cover up my chest, as much as I still don’t know if he actually had forgotten the swimsuit. I just remember crying. I remember being pushed onto the beach in only shorts and my blue bowl cut; a group of boys my age wading up to me, excited to see a new friend. “Hey, man! Cool hair.”

I remember my chest tightening and tears stinging my eyes, feeling utterly mortified and so dysphoric I forgot my own name, which is completely unisex and did nothing to prove that I was actually a girl. (It’s important to note here that not everyone assigned girl at birth identifies that way, or as one or the other gender, but I always have.)

I remember looking over at my dad, and seeing him beaming. His son. Being boys with other boys.

Something had settled in me by the time I was 13: I didn’t like women, and I didn’t want to be like them. There were millions of inane things women were simply bad at: like directions, my dad would say. They have no sense of a map. A step-girlfriend came into my life: a woman who seemed to sway slightly as she stood straight on her skinny legs, with a constant look of wide-eyed bewilderment, a pixie puff of golden curls, and always bright pink lipstick. She looked for all the world like who would be cast as Big Bird’s wife in the live cast version of Sesame Street.

Sandra had her eyebrows and lip-liner tattooed on, and she said things like “serviettes” instead of napkins and “do you want to set the table?” instead of “could you set the table?” She put flax powder on everything she ate and made tea by dipping a tea bag once into hot water and setting it aside. Her favorite things to do were to go out dancing, and watch me scrub the bathroom and point out spots that were missed. She was, as my father said, “the icon of femininity: submissive and demure,” or as my grandmother put it, “a Barbie doll with no self-respect.” These were, allegedly, the same thing. Meanwhile, I was a chubby middle-schooler with frizzy hair and glasses. I often felt like a Semitic goat-herder next to her.

My Father, The Oppressor, The Immigrant, The Patriarch, My Hero
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One time, I went with Sandra to the grocery store. She had only lived with us for two weeks at this point. We passed by an outdoor clothing sale, and she gasped at a long black number, holding it up to her body. “What do you think?!” She squealed, swishing it around. I shrugged. I was moody and contrarian and hardly knew the woman. Of course, she bought it.

Back home, she instructed me to sit and wait for her to try it on. She emerged two minutes later in the clinging dress, which consisted of a sparkly black slip underneath an ankle-length sheath of fine mesh. It was nice, and I said so. All of a sudden she gasped, then clapped her hands and squealed with delight. “I have an idea!”

She quickly shut the door behind her again. This time, she emerged in only the long sheath of mesh, without the slip underneath, or underwear. Nipples, stomach, ass; all dimly lit under the column of tight mesh. Whenever I encounter the phrase serpentine smile, I recall this moment. “Do you think your dad will like it?” She said, twirling.

This is the first time I understood that this was power.

Now that I was 13, my dad was over the desire to make me a tomboy and was now interested in fostering the future woman in me. He encouraged me to take “makeup lessons” with Sandra, to buy colorful clothes and more dresses. He wanted me to lose weight. He said that when I was 18, he would get me lasik surgery, and that when I was 21, he would pay for teeth whitening, and breast implants. He continued to lament my lack of affection toward him.

“When I heard the baby was a girl, I thought, at least she’ll be affectionate,” he’d say every time I’d swat away his hand from the back of my neck, where he liked to control where I looked while we walked.

I became aware of my father’s preoccupation with women’s bodies: When I would comment on a shirt a passing woman was wearing that I thought was cute, my dad would respond with, “I like what’s underneath it.” He had a critique for every woman we encountered: “She’d be attractive if she lost five pounds,” or “Why is her husband with her with an ass like that? She must come from money.”

I became aware of my father’s preoccupation with women’s bodies.
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This served his relationship with Sandra well. She was a stay-at-home Body, retired and tasked with only one duty — maintenance. Her days were spent eating slowly and carefully, and executing day-long exercise regimens. My father would often try to convince her to go to a fertility clinic to impregnate a Y-chromosome fertilized egg. At school, I would eat only bell peppers and cubes of watermelon for lunch. In nightmares of failure, I would often dream of a slowly rotating petri dish.

More and more my father pushed for me to be more effusive, eager, and skirted. There were two opposing categories for a woman’s appearance that were negative ends of the spectrum: “like a lesbian” and “like a prostitute.” Where fathers wanted their daughters was somewhere safely in the middle. For my father, the main source of power any woman could possess was her sensuality.

I think, in some deeply misguided way, this was his most genuine expression of love, as well as his most perplexing directive. At once, he wanted me to have power (read: sexuality) while remaining modestly pure and virginal. This was confusing for him. I was his child — he wanted me to command attention and be heard — yet the only way for a woman to accomplish that was to be enticing. “You want to be pretty, but not beautiful. If you’re plain looking, then you’ll be overlooked in life. If you’re beautiful, life will always be very difficult for you.” By “difficult” he meant: experience violence at the hands of men who will want you.

My Dad Wanted A Melania Wife And An Ivanka Daughter
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By 14, I was at a prestigious all-girls school. I wore baggy clothes and focused entirely on books, being angry, and debate club. At school, I was immersed in a culture of women I respected, but I was not pretty or enticing, so I defaulted to the only other method of power I knew: my father’s.

As the emotional abuse of Sandra increased at home, in which she would be elaborately punished for hours for absent-mindedly leaving a burner on, the flame of my own resentment for her weakness and meek toleration grew. I would dry-heave in the train station when it was time to go home. I was condescending and abusive in conversation. Every time I spoke to someone who threatened me with vulnerability, I would think of Sandra’s most pathetic expression — her wide-eyed teariness and profuse apologizing for the most inane crime — and export that disgust upon anyone in my vicinity who dared to be a “pussy.” I wanted, more than anything, for that pitiful woman to punch my dad in the face in defiance. But that concept didn’t fit into sensuality or tyranny, the two forms of power, the yin and yang, the Mars and Venus, that I knew of. Every day this failed to happen, the gentlest parts of myself shut tighter.

From there, it is a poorly edited film. Image: many stills of my father screaming, at me or Sandra, or anyone. Stopping the car, kicking on the highway, locking us in rooms, withholding school or medicine. Scene: the day the judge announces that I am finally emancipated. Scene: Sandra visiting me at my mother’s house and squeezing my arm urgently to say, “I’m leaving him too.” Scene: Sandra taking it upon herself to visit me at college a year later to tell me she is back with my father. Scene: my grandmother telling me that my father has “adopted” a 23-year-old woman as his “daughter.” Scene: finding out he has broken off contact with his “daughter” after she flirted with men in his presence. Same scene: realizing that my father has never seen me past the age of 17. Image: wearing a dress, image: feminist theory!, image: challenging and changing, image: loving being a woman, loving myself.

Every time I spoke to someone who threatened me with vulnerability, I would think of Sandra’s most pathetic expression.
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There is much more that happened than I could possibly cover, but what remains are the questions — how do we reconcile with what has happened to us, from the broadest way we must reconcile with the most vicious histories of our foremothers’ treatment to the barest facts of our childhood? What does it mean for the clinical toxicity of the patriarch when his only reflection is found in the pool of a daughter? In which no woman is willing to bear him a son, in which no daughter is willing to be his, in which female dissent has dictated the dissolution of his most profound desire: an heir?

I have his hands, his chin, his sense of humor, his love of apples, bluegrass, and compulsive need to share articles. I have never seen him cry. I am the only child he will ever have. I entertain the thought that my father really did know that there was more to women, to life, to me, and that he just didn’t know how to deal with it.

A few months ago, my father and I talked on the phone for the first time in six years. He asked if I remembered when he would lock me in the bathroom in five-hour increments. He reminded me that I was in there so long because every time he would open the door to tell me time-out was up, I would stubbornly say, “No worries, I’m enjoying myself just fine.” This was infuriating for him, this way in which I would turn the power trip on its head. He explains that I have the same problem as my mother, who would pretend it didn’t hurt when her father beat her, which made my grandfather so angry he would keep going. On the phone, my dad said to me, “Can you blame us? How else do you deal with a girl like that?”

I can’t answer this because in truth, I have only loved and celebrated girls like that. I have only tried to tell girls like that that loving others does not make you weak, and resisting mistreatment does not make you a delinquent. I have only dreamt of a girl like that whose spirit is made neither for sex nor breaking, who knows she is complex, dynamic, and wanted, who exists beyond the fears and insecurities of those who aren’t able to imagine the universe of her.

By Erica Karnes

“Do you want to throw a drop cloth down?” he propositions from the hallway. Donning a paint-stained dress I once wore to client meetings, I’m barefoot and sweating, perched haphazardly above an open can of primer, a roller in each hand.

“No thanks,” I call over my shoulder, “I don’t really spill when I’m painting.” Distracted by a corner of un-taped trim, I return to my task moments later, only to misjudge the weight of my paint-filled tray. A quarter gallon of “Twinkling Lights” spreads across the floor.

It’s only while cursing myself, wiping paint from my brow with the back of my wrist, that I notice the drop cloth under my feet — painstakingly spread by him during one of my many manic diversions. I hear him silently shuffle down the hallway, waiting for the “I told you so” that never comes.

Such is the cadence of our DIY fixer-upper dance. Lacking essentially all experience around homeownership, I charge forth, uninhibited and uneducated. What I lack in familiarity, I’m convinced I earn back via guttural enthusiasm. Drop cloths are for chumps — as is mundane research or project preparation of any kind. Why waste energy mentally anticipating the multiple levels of asbestos, or rot, or rat colonies that foster under the fridge, when the crowbar sits within reach, and one can simply “figure it out,” en route?

His tactics, however, lie somewhere between studying for the best and expecting the worst. While his physical movements often appear sluggish, his face cast in a dubious scowl, mentally he absorbs and retains every resource available. Restless, I pace the hallway yielding electric tools I have no idea how to operate. He patiently perches atop an unfinished chair, watching YouTube tutorials on painting linoleum in one hand while he reads consumer reviews of various floor putty from his laptop.

Our personalities couldn’t reside further apart along the compatibility spectrum. And yet this project house — isolated and imperfect, sporting cracked tiles and off-kilter support beams — embodies some kind of emotional petri dish, and has enabled our quirks to sprout into respective strengths.

“Wake up!” I hiss. “Do you hear that? Wake UP!” I’m shaking him by both shoulders as he jolts awake in bed. “What? What is it?!” he gasps.

“Listen.”

We sit up. Silence. Dim moonlight cascades across the bedroom floor, offering the only source of visual assistance. We wait, sheets kicked to our feet. Suddenly, a loud grinding sound begins.

“It’s that fucking rat!” I whisper, furious and frantic. He says nothing, continues to listen. “We have to kill it. We have to do something! We have…” I’ve rolled out of bed, and am crouched on the floor, my ears pressed to the hardwood.

The chomping continues. As does my panicked rage.

“I wonder if it’s nesting,” he finally speaks.

“WHAT?!” I yelp. “Are you kidding me?!”

Deadpan, he shrugs “No.”

This continues for several minutes. The rat chomps. I crawl around swearing, looking for cracks in the walls or any evidence that either I could kill it, or it could kill me. By this point, he’s leaned back into the sheets. He watches me with an amused grin on his face.

“There’s nothing we can do right now,” he finally offers. “It’s in the walls. Or under the flooring. Whatever it’s doing, we can’t deal with it in this particular moment.”

Hunched over a slight seam in the floorboards, I look up. In that moment, I realize the ridiculousness of the situation. That ripping up flooring, under the white light of the moon, to declare war on a sole rodent that’s likely lived here longer than us veered dangerously closer to insanity than ambition. Resigned, I sighed and curled back into bed.

The next morning, as he started a fire and a fresh pot of coffee, I found him aggressively researching the nesting habits of rodents. He passed me some creamer for my coffee, proudly stating “I ordered some rat poison online. It got really great reviews.”

Perhaps it takes not just one seemingly unsolvable situation (stubborn rats that bypass poison for the innards of my dishwasher, for example), but an unending series of them — cracked walls, a resident family of otters, wonky plumbing, flooding floors, exposed mystery wires, etc. — to convince a compulsive, action-oriented, eternal half-asser such as myself to be slightly more detail oriented, or to convert a self-diagnosed perfectionist such as him into “a little less so.”

This isolated and imperfect project house embodies some kind of emotional petri dish, and has enabled our quirks to sprout into respective strengths.
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As he and this house stumbled into my life during the same fated weekend, our efforts together seem especially evocative. I had no plans for a partner, and no plans for property either. When, after a casual first date, we realized we’d both be visiting the same rural Pacific Northwest island at the same time — him to hunt for property with his father, me to build beach bonfires with local friends — we reconvened at its salty dive bar, and sipped scotch until the early hours of the morning on the boat he’d moored across the street.

The next day, while soaking up the sun from a friend’s back porch, I was informed they were planning on selling their secluded sanctuary. Combating both a slight hangover and new-crush stomach flips, I wandered their forested property, silently crunching numbers and whispering “what if…” to myself.

Needless to say, rather than the usual post-hookup text — “Last night was fun, let’s do it again soon” — I photo-bombed him with images of the heavily wooded lot, with some obscure message of “Last night was fun… I think I’m going to buy this house.”

He didn’t duck out at that moment; instead the whirlwind of newness took root simultaneously. Our love story was dotted with the anti-romance of loans and banks, insurance and inspections — but from under a cloud of charming mystique wherein we conjured up our country-life daydream. We’d raise babies and chickens, perfect our own crafts beside an ever-cracking fire, make love in the garden, forever protected from neighbors, society, pain, or disappointment. He’d chop wood shirtless and read all about sailing. I’d float about with some forever-glow of fertility, radiating wisdom and writing for “my soul” instead of for Silicon Valley. My hair would be fucking incredible too.

When, after months of logistics, the house was officially mine, we went out to celebrate and simply stared at each other, shocked and beaming. Flushed with the sheer adrenaline of possibility.

Sawdust sprays from the far end of the hallway. He works beside his father, a stouter, silver version of himself, to build custom door-frames for a slightly-tilted hallway. They mirror each other’s idiosyncrasies, frowning and focused, alternating stoic pulls of their unkempt beards. I’m painting again, this time the kitchen. This time, with a drop cloth spread under my feet. Various tools sputter and churn to a Rolling Stones playlist I’ve cranked full-volume, and a coiled trail of cords twist throughout the house, connecting each of our separate worlds by a multi-colored, utilitarian thread.

In this house that we fix — in this life that we build, we pay homage to the past while we anticipate the future. Chuckling together, we paint over the decade’s worth of pencil scratches that mark the heights of the previous owner’s children. We proudly discuss our own intended parenting tactics with a smug naiveté that can only come from the childless.

We bicker over décor. He feels that our space should be full of objects of meaning. Tokens from our pasts. Memorabilia full of ample potential stories for our ample potential grandbabies. Pieces should have a purpose. Knick knacks need a point.

In this house that we fix — in this life that we build, we pay homage to the past while we anticipate the future.
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I disagree, lining shelves with sparse relics of my childhood alongside free tchotchkes from the dump. Dog-eared books that I’ve read and reread throughout my entire life lean against insignificant literature that happens to feature an ornate, cool-looking cover.

We learn to balance incorporating things that meant something once, with things that might mean something some day. A rough-standing end table — yet another one of my free finds — acts as a placeholder, reserving the space for the antique chair his deceased mother rocked him to sleep in. While we’ll likely continue this tradition — cooing our own little ones to rest from a literal framework of nostalgia and nurturing — my guess is it will inevitably cradle a thrifty throw pillow. (One that matches my cheap area rug or Goodwill ceramics, of course.)

As the weeks pass, and projects evolve into even more projects, I watch his pedantry thin. The research never ceases, but his frustrated perma-frown slowly ebbs, and the slew of cursing that once capped any less-than-ideal outcome eventually morphs to a steadfast, “Good enough for now.”

I, on the other hand, never necessarily slow down. Rather, I begin to appreciate the adrenaline of channeling brute force or raw gusto into tasks that have already been roughly outlined, moderately understood, or proven to be non-life-threatening. I give him the time and space to ponder best practices and weigh options. He, in turn, redirects my eagerness towards “To Dos” that are already cued up, or worst case scenario, steps aside with a shrug and an eye-roll to let my stubborn flurry run its course.

And while the rat still occasionally scratches from beneath our floorboards, its nocturnal tap-dancing somehow seems less a call to arms — less a pressing project to immediately tackle, and more just a minor inconvenience and messy reality of a household already ripe with compromise. And promise.

My racist mother-in-law is dying.

Well, we think she may be dying. She is in the hospital and they are trying to figure out what’s happening, but it’s been three days and we have no answers. My significant other (S.O.) drove down to be with his family. I chose not to go because I choose not to have a relationship with them, and it would be an additional expense during a time where we are barely keeping ourselves afloat financially. So, he went, and I stayed home.

He’s angry at me now.

I knew he would be. Here he is, in crisis about his mother, and I am choosing not to physically be there for him. I’m not working a 9–5 so I wouldn’t be missing work. I am available to go, but because I won’t stay in the home of people who are casually, unapologetically “racist-lite,” I’m not being supportive.

The last time someone in his immediate family was sick, I went to his family’s place, worked out of a hotel, spent evenings with them at the hospital, and had his mom ask me silly shit like, “How do Black people remove facial hair?” and “Your children would be beautiful, cuz of the skin” — ridiculous, offensive questions that intentionally identified me as “other” in their presence and implied that an infusion of whiteness into my gene pool would benefit any potential offspring. His mom would tell me how she wanted a Black woman angel for her holiday mantle, but all the Black ones were unattractive, so she couldn’t find one. His father constantly referred to my friends as a gang, despite repeated correction.

It was always about me being different and how I was different and how my difference was some kind of problem in some way. And each time, my S.O. would look ashamed and embarrassed while never addressing the transgressions. And when I tried to address this with his family, I was met with false apologies and protestations of innocent ignorance because they just didn’t know. The expectation was always that I needed to be patient. That I needed to excuse them. That these grown ass people, 30+ years my senior, were ignorant children stumbling through conversations about race, and I was meant to be the mature person educating them.

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I won’t stay in the home of people who are casually, unapologetically ‘racist-lite.’
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My S.O. knew this was fucked up, but it was his sister’s wedding, or Xmas, or the health of his family member was the priority, and I needed to remember that. And while he never explicitly said this, he hinted that his parents were not particularly bright or socially adept. He actively limits his contact with them because, sadly, while he loves them, he doesn’t like them. I know he didn’t understand how offensive their comments were; I know the particulars were lost on him and all he knew was that I was upset. And in the interest of getting in and out of whatever social obligation pulled me into their orbit, I needed to understand they were limited and let this ignorant shit go because the situation at hand was always more important, and I shouldn’t make things about me. Except this was about me — about how his family talks to me — and only I seemed to care about it.

It was after that visit, and some other choice comments his mother made about Black people murdered by police, that I decided not to fuck with his family anymore. Specifically, I decided that I wouldn’t interact with them in any way. I didn’t want any gifts from them, wouldn’t let them in my home, and sure as hell wouldn’t visit them for any reason. I told my S.O. that he was welcome to have a relationship with them but that I wouldn’t and he could navigate that however he wanted.

Before cutting his family off, I also told my S.O. that he needed to confront his parents about their bullshit, which he did. He received the same response I did from his mom — the lie of “I didn’t think it was racist? I didn’t know. I’m sorry” that white women love to say. His father sided with my S.O. but never admitted to his role in it. In the end, my S.O. didn’t see the point in trying to get them to change because they don’t see anything wrong with their beliefs.

A few months later, his family happily voted for the orange menace, and they have since supported his agenda wholeheartedly. My S.O. attempted talking about politics with them only to find himself overwhelmed by their nonsense rhetoric. At one point, his mother said something along the lines of “I have to vote white. It’s the only thing I know how to do.” I remember my S.O. hanging up on her at that point, because what is there to say to that? Over time, I watched him become more depressed and defeated as he saw the damage white people were willing to inflict upon everyone to uphold white supremacy.

In some ways I felt bad for my S.O., because the blinders had slid back even more, and he was faced with the reality of white people — people with whom he identified for the majority of his life. And because he was one of them, he hated what it said about him.

My S.O. has shown me that he’s still figuring out how to manage this oppression enacted by those he cares about. While he figures that out, I’ll be somewhere else, managing my self-care. I’ve offered my emotional support from a distance — by offering him any time he needs, managing the household responsibilities, dipping further into savings to supplement the income we’re losing by him taking this time off, and letting him feel his pain without trying to cheer him up. I share stories about health crises that weren’t as dire as they initially seemed, without minimizing the seriousness of his mother’s current situation. I am here for him in a way that isn’t damaging to me.

And if that isn’t enough for him, he needs to figure that out. I am not sacrificing my well-being in this.

My choice to not visit his mother in the hospital has not been easy. I am sitting here now, sorting through my thoughts as I try to figure out what’s best. What’s best for him. What’s best for me. He called me when he got to the hospital to tell me that he was upset I wasn’t there with him. I told him that I feel bad about it but that I was not going to put myself in a vulnerable situation with people who I do not have a relationship with.

This might break us. I realize that. I don’t want it to, but it could.

Our culture is inundated with images of Black women sacrificing themselves in every way imaginable for whatever greater good is in vogue. And when we collapse from the strain and die from the stress, people look around for the next martyr for the cause. But I’m not a martyr. I’m a Black woman trying to live her life under ridiculous circumstances, in a society that tells me I’m not enough. I deserve better than sacrificing my physical and emotional safety to support anyone.

And this isn’t just about my S.O. As I began talking about the oppressive transgressions I’ve experienced at the hands of my S.O.’s family, people I called friends and family basically told me to be silent. They would ask me how my S.O. felt about the things I said. They told me I was being too militant and insensitive. That I was risking my relationship by confronting the misogynoir in my life. I was advised on multiple occasions to let it go and be considerate of his feelings. To make this easy for him. My self-worth was secondary to maintaining this relationship.

I found myself angry at all those people in my life, and as a result, some of them aren’t in my life anymore.

I understand that we need to have other people in our lives who challenge us and our beliefs, but that’s different from having to confront the negation of your very humanity. People like to pick me apart for daring to emote, express, and resist, to protect myself from the harm of those who see me as less than. They like to reduce my pain to something hormonal or irrational.

I’ve lost count of the myriad ways people will tell me to put my well-being and emotional and personal safety behind the needs of others, be they the men in my life, the white people in my life, the good of the family, the good of the company…the reasons are limitless. In this case, I am expected to swallow the abuse of my S.O.’s family and pretend everything is fine…for their comfort. For their peace.

No.

My well-being demands that I not do that. Call it selfish if you want; I am always called selfish when I prioritize my emotional and physical needs.

Multiple people have asked me if I will go to my mother-in-law’s funeral, and when I started writing this, I had no answer. I love my husband. I try to be there for him in any number of ways. And in the beginning of our relationship, I suppressed parts of myself for his comfort.

But being with him has pushed me to grow in ways I never anticipated. His friends and family have forced me to engage with racist people on a level I’d never experienced before, and I’ve learned how egregious white people are when it comes to engaging in oppression. There is a level of denial I had to purge because I was seeing in real time how much of a fuck these people didn’t give. As a result, I am stronger, more confident, and better able to identify, address, and care for my needs.

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I’ve learned how egregious white people are when it comes to engaging in oppression.
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Already, my S.O. is fielding emotional attacks from his family — accusations of selfishness and attention-seeking for dropping everything to be with them and being chastised for not communicating enough or sharing too much with people other than family. His family is emotionally immature and manipulative on a good day — characteristics that are only exacerbated in times of crisis. He is terrible about asking for support and this situation with his mother’s failing health exacerbates every part of him that he needs to continue developing. His pain and fear are palatable, and I don’t believe his family will help him through this crisis.

My presence, or lack thereof, will be weaponized, as this is what they do. These are people who sat with my family at Xmas years ago, holed up in a corner, looking afraid to speak but when I was alone, would express their bigotry through seemingly innocent and inoffensive questions like, “Why are there so many Indian people in your neighborhood?” and “Did you have a gay person at the wedding? They seemed kinda flamboyant.”

To them, I’m already this big, Black threat that they feel the need to manage and can’t. And while my presence would soothe my S.O., it would cause so many other problems, where only my willingness to accept their abuse would keep shit from blowing up.

No.

I know society tells you that Black women are expendable, but I am not. This is the hill I choose to die on and while I hope we can find a workable solution for both of us, there are limits I will not compromise on.

I know that he needs me. I need him, too. And attending the funeral is an option. Not the viewing. Not the aftermath, but maybe the actual funeral. But anything where I need to socialize with his family?

No.

These people are dangerous to me and that is my line.

My S.O. and I chose a complicated relationship that doesn’t operate under the standards society dictates. We are not a social norm, and that means that these situations will require complicated decisions. Untraditional choices. Non-linear pathways that he and I will have to create for ourselves. This is a situation where our needs are at cross-purposes, and we need to figure out how to be there for one another without putting the other in harm’s way. We need to not punish ourselves for not looking like what’s “normal.”

We have to accept each other’s needs and understand that sometimes, we cannot be there for each other in the way we envision. As he works on addressing his anti-Blackness and racism, he also needs to learn what it means for me to prioritize my self-love.

Interracial relationships, specifically interracial relationships composed of Black and white partners, are complicated. They are intense work. Anti-Blackness is so commonplace as to be invisible without conscious effort to see and address it. I talk about it, I work through it, and I share my story because there is a lack of support for people in these relationships. People on the outside are cruel about this. I have been told repeatedly that I fucked up and should end the relationship; that this can never work; that I should have known what I was getting into…

Well, I didn’t. I didn’t understand the complexity of what this would be and how it would play out. I still don’t know if we will last, but that’s our decision to make. And in the meantime, I am learning. I’m learning what I need, what works for me, and what works for us.

Society has told me time and again that I am meant to be an emotional mule and a willing sacrifice. I’m telling society and anyone pushing that narrative to fuck off. I am more than everything you’ve said, and fuck you if you have a problem with it.

In 2003, I was 13 years old. The Iraq War was just starting, the Pioneer 10 satellite had broadcast its final radio signal, and I was seated at a public computer in upstate New York, looking at porn. My house was still connected to 128k dial-up, and I was forbidden from having my own AOL password; as such, I spent an hour a day at the library whenever possible, browsing assorted Flash cartoon sites and quietly investigating the wide world of adult entertainment. (To the librarians: I am sorry for sullying your hall of learning. I had no choice.)

Since I’d already been reading comic books for eight years, it should come as no surprise that my smut of choice as a teenager was the cartoon variety. I’d open up Internet Explorer, navigate over to Penisbot (I know), and search their galleries for something different than the creepy Simpsons-cest that dominated the cartoon porn landscape. For the most part, everything I found was solidly heteronormative, with a few lesbian scenes here and there. And I didn’t think to question it.

Until Tilt Mode.

Created by an artist known only as Locke (who also published a few stories through Eros Comix, an adult-oriented imprint of Fantagraphics Books, but has since faded into relative obscurity), Tilt Mode is the story of Amanda, a student who discovers while masturbating in the shower that she can sprout a penis from her clit when aroused. She immediately gets a chance to test her new member when her friend Suzy comes over, and studying takes a back seat to sexy times.

It might not be a particularly good comic — Suzy’s stylized text-speak dialogue is grating at best — but Locke’s faux-manga style has a sexy-cute appeal to it. It wasn’t the bad dialogue that drew me to the story, though. Tilt Mode gave me my first look at the gender-bending world of futanari and started me on the road to realizing my identity as a trans woman, a journey that would take more than a decade to complete.

Futanari is a Japanese word literally meaning “dual form” or “to be of two kinds,” and is used to describe various states of hermaphroditism and androgyny, depending on the context. When discussing pornography — as we’ll be doing for the next 600 words or so — futanari, commonly shortened to “futa,” is a genre of Japanese cartoon porn that stars women with penises. Some have testicles, some don’t; some have vaginas, some don’t.

Internet perverts have argued for years over what types of futa, if any, make the consumer gay, but at 13, I had no interest in codifying the nuances. The extent of my thought process at that time was my sudden knowledge that being a dickgirl was probably the best thing I could ever be.

And then I carefully avoided thinking about the consequences of that idea for five years.

Instead, I spent that time navigating the barbarous wilderness that is Appalachian public high school, filled as it was with hyenas prowling for fresh meat to call “faggot.” (It’s not a perfect metaphor.) Though I wasn’t convinced I was gay — boys held little appeal for me, though I admit I was curious — there was something weird about me, something I tried to understand by reading queer erotica, which was easier to download and save for later, on the rare occasions that I managed to sneak onto the dial-up connection, than cartoons. But reading about gay boys and crossdressers didn’t quite scratch that itch, and for years, I could never find anything quite like Tilt Mode, having even forgotten its name.

In college, everything changed. Not only did I have access to high-speed campus internet, the student body had also set up an illicit file-sharing network that contained untold terabytes of movies, games, music — and porn. Between that and my newfound friends on 4chan (I know), I had all the X-rated resources I’d lacked in high school, and none of the supervision.

Over the next few years, the way I related to myself and my sexuality shifted dramatically. I read what seems in retrospect to be hundreds of hentai stories in dozens of disparate genres, always coming back to sci-fi and fantasy tales of my beloved futa.

I thrilled to the misadventures of the stud-slash-sub Yukito in Kawaraya Ata’s Kopipe, in which a mad scientist copies body parts from one person to another — a trope that thrilled me but was unrealistic enough for me to convince myself that this fetish was just that, not an indication that I was unhappy being a boy. After all, wasn’t I surrounded by hundreds of people on the internet who also got turned on by this stuff? And it’s not like anything like that could ever happen anyway, right?

But it only took so long before I had to admit: I was jealous. I could barely contain my envy when the hero of Hinemosu Notari’s Mirror Image crossdressed so hard he became a futa, and I saw too much of myself in the shy-but-slutty futas and femboys of the artist InCase. Still, I managed to convince myself I wasn’t trans; I just wanted to live in a girl’s body, like the protagonist in Custom Girl who plays a futuristic VR game that allows him to experience sex as a woman! That’s normal for boys to desire fervently and constantly, right?

I realized later that I’m not the only one who felt this way. Many trans women in my community with whom I’ve spoken have expressed similar feelings about futa and “trap” comics — about boys who are girlish enough to “trap” straight men into having sex with them. Thirty Helens, a trans woman who is herself a creator of futanari comics that she posts on her Tumblr, told me in an interview that consuming futa material before transitioning “helped partly fill a void left by being in the closet while maintaining a mental distance from transness.”

The fervor over whether futa “makes you gay” or “straight” that I used to see online is understandable, she says, “because I used to do all these logic backflips in my head to do anything to convince myself I wasn’t trans while still engaging with that side of me a little.” But, she continued, “it helped me come to terms with a lot of stuff after transition. It helped me to feel more secure and sexy regarding my body.”

Transitioning was inevitable for me as well. Once I read Katou Jun’s Avatar Transform!, there was only so much I could do to deny it. Similar to Custom Girl, the hero in Katou’s story explores a futanari body in a VR world, while slowly abandoning all pretense at maleness in real life.

The more I read the chapters in which he realizes a woman’s body in VR feels more natural than his own, the less I could deny it: I wanted that. I wanted to be cute, girlish, even beautiful. It took until the summer of 2015 — more than 10 years after I first read Tilt Mode — to begin coming out to my friends and family, and months more to begin hormone therapy. But I did it, and the results have been more fulfilling than I could ever have imagined.

All this is not to say that futa is intrinsically a trans genre, nor are all its aficionados trans themselves. But as Thirty Helens says, “I think they’re inherently linked. These bodies resemble our bodies and it’s time to stop pretending otherwise, it’s time to stop being afraid that it makes you gay . . . and maybe even more people can connect in a real way without doing the same thing I did, engaging but still keeping a distance from trans womanhood.”

Futa didn’t make me a dyke-y trans girl. It just helped me realize that’s who I wanted to be. Hopefully, it will help other fledgling dickgirls realize it sooner than I did.

But while this is biological fact, there’s something about mixing sexual pleasure with birth that seems to rub people the wrong way. The same can be said about intercourse during pregnancy, which can be awkward due to both physical and emotional logistics.

What is it about childbearing that seems to necessitate de-sexualization? There are, of course, the physical and emotional realities of pregnancy and new motherhood that often change dynamics and interest in sexual relationships.

But need they?

It may well be that for some, pregnancy and sexuality can complement one another beautifully. When one considers anatomy, and the reliable presence of the immovable clitoris, sexual pleasure becomes a possibility not just throughout pregnancy but also during childbirth. If it seems counterintuitive, ask yourself why. Anatomically speaking, it shouldn’t exactly be shocking that women have experienced orgasms while giving birth. The head of a baby passing through the birth canal is likely to bump against the clitoris more directly than anything ever has before, given the angle. There may even be a palliative effect to this contact; studies that sought to prove the existence of the vaginal orgasm found that the pressure of the baby’s descending head through the vagina may have pain suppression qualities due to its proximity to the clitoris, whether it’s experienced as sexual or not.

But given that many women labor and deliver babies in spaces that afford them very little privacy, and they are overwhelmed by feelings of shame if they so much as defecate on the bed, it’s not surprising that these fleeting moments of conflicting sensations are stifled. Perhaps even more so if they do provide relief from pain.

There are certainly people who have sex throughout pregnancy, as well as others who have embraced the art of the “orgasmic birth.” But popular culture still seems to be unaware of the phenomenon. Even though many contemporary writers and filmmakers have set out to talk to mothers about the experience, it’s still referred to as women’s “best-kept secret.” However, it’s hardly a new concept. Ina May Gaskin, the pioneering midwife whose book Spiritual Midwifery is regarded as a seminal text on the topic, has written extensively about the phenomenon of sexuality in pregnancy, including orgasmic births, since the 1970s.

So maybe this “secret” is one being kept out of shame. Many doulas, including Gaskin, argue that orgasmic birth is possible for anyone, and that it comes down to creating the right environment, both internally and externally, to facilitate the experience. A woman in England recently made headlines when she admitted that not only had she orgasmed during the births of all four of her children, but that the most recent one left her with orgasmic sensations for three weeks, postpartum. She said hypnobirthing, a technique that employs self-hypnosis to control pain, allowed her to fully experience the more pleasurable aspects of labor and delivery.

Many women, however, balk at the idea and wonder why anyone would even be thinking about sexual pleasure while giving birth — if not due to the inherent conflict of sexuality and motherhood, then due to the often grueling nature of childbirth itself.

“I was in excruciating pain for 12 hours, sex never crossed my mind,” said a 37-year-old mother of one in a response to an anonymous questionnaire. She added, “I didn’t feel comfortable with my body during the whole pregnancy.” This is a sentiment echoed by many who responded to this online survey, administered through Typeform, which asked participants about age, number of pregnancies, and their sexual preferences and behaviors during pregnancy, which can often be a taboo topic.

“I hated it, to be honest,” said one 26-year-old mother of one. “I felt like my body wasn’t my own and experienced dysphoria so crippling that I dissociated and still don’t remember 90% of my pregnancy that led to me giving birth.”

“I felt physically, mentally, and emotionally impaired,” said a 36-year-old mother of one, who reported that for her the changes weren’t just physical, but emotional. “I imagined I would be active and glowing, but I couldn’t think clearly, I was too exhausted to accomplish anything, and I felt like my brain was underwater all the time.”

But some wrote that they actually felt great throughout their pregnancies, maybe even better than before. “I loved my body during pregnancy more than I usually do,” said a 26-year-old mother of two. For some, pregnancy can feel pretty good overall due to an elevated dose of progesterone, a hormone that’s produced in smaller amounts throughout the menstrual cycle, but skyrockets during pregnancy, bringing along all its PMS symptom-reducing benefits.

Of course, how one feels physically paired with how they feel about themselves emotionally certainly can have an impact on sexuality. Many women who responded to the questionnaire said that they had sexual intercourse throughout their pregnancies, and one woman, a 27-year-old mother of two, said her second labor started directly after intercourse (à la Rachel in that episode of Friends). While sex drives waxed and waned for many, those physical changes of pregnancy definitely impacted whether sex was going to happen. As that 27-year-old mom put it rather succinctly, she felt, “Sometimes drained, sometimes really horny.”

This begs the question of masturbation. Some women have discovered that even if their partner is unavailable, or unwilling, to participate in sexual activity throughout pregnancy, solo sex can provide a temporary reprieve from the discomfort. Masturbation can also be used as a form of relief during labor and delivery. Angela Gallo made headlines earlier this year when she penned a blog post explaining why she masturbated throughout labor. And why not? As Gallo pointed out, masturbation not only provides a flush of feel-good sensations, it also directs focus to the vagina, where all the action is. In the same vein as self-hypnosis, anything that can redirect the focus from the chaos of childbirth, whether it be external or internal, to the center itself seems like an incredibly useful technique, even if it might freak some people out.

It’s also one that is probably far more innate than we realize. Some studies have found that the neurobiology of pain and pleasure are remarkably similar, and much of this relates to motivation. The motivation to pursue pleasure versus the motivation to avoid pain can be at odds but often overlap, and the hierarchy will change, given the circumstance. Sometimes, in order to survive, the avoidance of pain will outrank the pursuit of pleasure. But sometimes, in the face of pain, the analgesic effect of pleasure can be worth the risk.

Viewed in the context of labor and delivery, which is a well-known painful but temporary experience, it doesn’t seem so outlandish for that pleasure center of the brain to be stimulated in multiple ways, not just with medications or anesthetics. While these pain-relieving tactics, like epidurals, are relatively commonplace in hospital births, they don’t always appeal to every patient, and they may not work for every birth. Neither, of course, would masturbation during labor be appealing or possible for everyone, but unlike epidurals, which are just part of the childbirth lexicon now, many probably don’t even realize they have the option.

When asked if they would consider using masturbation or intercourse as a pain relief technique during labor, one 17-year-old respondent said, “I’m giving birth in a few weeks, but honestly, it’d be too weird for me to masturbate or have sex during labor. I’d only masturbate if I knew the orgasm would help ease my pain.” The majority of the respondents said they would not masturbate, even if they were given the privacy to do so.

While many found the question jarring, one mother seemed to get to the root of the resistance. “I feel that most people tend to compartmentalize their bodies’ many functions, but I feel comfortable that we are sexual beings at the same time that we are mothering/fathering/feeding/caring/washing/needing beings,” she wrote, adding that while she and her partner didn’t engage in intercourse throughout her pregnancy or delivery, she would hardly begrudge anyone who wanted to give it a try. “For couples who are more open and comfortable, I think it’s great.”

The orbiting questions of sexual morality, shame, biology, social mores, and purpose continue to define the experience of childbirth, whether it be orgasmic or not. But wouldn’t it be marvelous if, one day, a woman could define the experience for herself?

The first Leia Organa that I knew and loved was a princess, although she wasn’t like any of the other princesses I’d seen in movies. She was smart and funny and loud and strong, and she had a true gift for getting in savage digs against anybody who looked at her crosswise. She didn’t need rescuing, and she had cool hair. For 9-year-old Anne, that Leia was basically perfect.

But in the wake of Carrie Fisher’s death, I’m not thinking about Leia the princess. Right now all of my thoughts are of the woman she became in 2015’s The Force Awakens: the older, wiser, battle-scarred leader of anti-Empire rebels. The Leia I need now is General Leia Organa.

General Organa doesn’t have the same glamor she did when she went by the name Princess Leia. She’s not young anymore, and she’s traded in her snowy white robes for a more serviceable outfit in drab earth tones. She doesn’t wear any insignia or other obvious indication of her rank. She’s given up her fancy updos for a more matronly hairstyle. She could be any other middle-aged woman, except for the way that she carries herself: with the swagger of someone who has grown accustomed to being in command.

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The Leia I need now is General Leia Organa.
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This Leia is not the smart-alecky ingenue of A New Hope. She’s the brilliant strategist who has to make a split-second decision after learning that their star system is the Starkiller base’s next target. She’s the compassionate leader who is willing to break up a meeting with high-ranking resistance officers in order to thank and comfort Finn. She’s the woman who senses that Han Solo — the only man that she has ever loved — has been killed, and after taking a moment to register that she swallows her grief and returns to her work.

She has done this over and over: swallowed her grief, returned to the work. At this point she has eaten decades of grief. This is a Leia who has lost almost every important person in her life: Her biological mother died shortly after her birth. Her biological father was a literal monster who barely knew she existed. Her home planet was destroyed when she was just a teenager, and her parents were killed in its destruction. Later, her son Ben was drawn to the dark side, and her brother Luke, who had been Ben’s teacher, was driven by his grief and guilt to an unknown planet at the edge of the universe. It was this same grief that presumably led her erstwhile husband, Han Solo, to reassume his role as a wise-cracking criminal.

Leia could have run away too. It would have been both easy and forgivable. Instead, she did what so many women have done throughout history: she held it together. She kept going.

Watching the early Star Wars movies, it’s clear that Leia was never meant to be the protagonist; she was meant to be the protagonist’s sexual prize. The audience is supposed to root for Luke, the Chosen One with special Jedi powers (never mind that Leia is also sensitive to the Force and probably would have crushed Yoda’s bootcamp), or else they’re supposed to love the roguish Han Solo. Leia was never supposed to be anything other than someone’s main squeeze. But something weird and magical happened in the story arc from A New Hope to The Force Awakens: Leia became the sleeper hero of the Star Wars franchise.

We have Carrie Fisher to thank for that, for bringing something to Leia that was deeper and more resonant than superficial specialness or charm. Leia was written as an empty vessel, and Fisher poured herself inside: her own pain, her own quiet struggle, her own resolve. With Fisher animating her, the princess who was supposed to be an object of romance became instead an engine of revolt. Leia is in it for the long haul. She fights and fights and fights, even when her family quits on her and the odds seem impossible. For Leia, doing whatever she can to bring down the fascist Empire is more important than her feelings or personal life. Without her steadfast presence, the rebellion would have been quashed long before Rey was born.

Like Fisher, Leia earned every tiny ounce of respect that came her way. She was given the title of princess because of who her parents were, but she earned the rank of general through hard and often miserable work. We love the mythos that heroes get where they are because they are special or chosen, and the people we hold up as icons reflect that. But the rebel army isn’t made up of Jedis — for the most part it’s just ordinary people united to fight for the same cause. And Leia, in spite of having once been royalty and maybe having some ability with the Force, is mostly as ordinary as any other soldier; she rose through the ranks not by manipulating the Force but by learning leadership skills and military tactics.

Simply put: Leia got to where she was by showing up and quietly learning to do the work.

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In times like this steady fighters are needed, the ones who have seen the Chosen One come and go.
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Princess Leia was wonderful, but General Organa is the one I’m looking to these days for guidance. It’s hard not to give in to a numb sort of nihilism. As the future grows darker and more uncertain, it’s easy to believe that our individual actions are worth nothing compared to humanity’s obvious and urgent desire for self-destruction. Like Luke, I’m sure we all feel the temptation to run away somewhere where no one can find us and nothing bad can reach us; since our leaders seem so intent on blowing us all up, we may as well go somewhere picturesque to live out our last days. It’s also tempting to hope that the Chosen One is out there somewhere, ready to swoop in and fix everything. Both of those options absolve us of having to take any action. But it’s in times like this that the steady, stubborn fighters are needed, the ones who have seen the Chosen One come and go and still refuse to give up. The ones who don’t back down even when everything seems impossible. The ones determined to believe that there is a future in spite of the evidence to the contrary. The ones who would rather die for what they believe in than live to be complicit in a fascist regime.

I hope we can all find a way to be General Organa, for ourselves and each other. May we all be able to get up every day and, in spite of our pain and loss and fear, put on our boots and our earth-tone vests and plan to destroy the Empire.

At the end of my last update, I lamented my painful initiation into the life of dating as a “normal” person. After some successful dates with Dan, a man I had initially met on OKCupid and with whom I had been texting daily for over a month, I thought we were well on our way toward achieving my ultimate goal of finding a committed, monogamous partner. Unfortunately, we were far from being on the same page.

Dan had basically dumped me to see another woman he claimed to like better, so when he texted me at the end of the last update to complain about her — after knowing her for less than a week (and me for over a month!) — I felt a weird performance anxiety over my potential response to him. There were so many things that my mind was trying to process: Should I reply? Why is he telling me this? Is he really so immature that he’d make a blanket statement about the class view of all doctors? (#NotAllDoctors)

One of the most challenging aspects of dating for me is deciding how to apply the common phrase “Nobody’s perfect.” Unfortunately for me (and perhaps fortunately for you, readers?), this weakness of mine was put to the test before I even had gotten my first match! I struggled with finding the elusive perfect balance between knowing that everyone has flaws that inevitably lead to them messing up from time to time, and acknowledging that forgiving those mess-ups can open the door to accepting unacceptable and/or incompatible behavior from a potential partner. This seems like a balance that can only be discovered through . . . welp . . . experience.

I officially have a love-hate relationship with the phrase “Practice makes perfect.”

Before this series, I found comfort in that perfectly reasonable saying; I’d say it to myself as a reminder to be patient when trying out something new. But when I had to apply it to my dating life, it became a platitude I bitterly muttered to myself as fuel to (reluctantly) keep going.

Despite my strong urge to go to my default reaction of ignoring Dan’s text and never speaking to him again, I decided to take a different route. After all, this #ItsTotallyMe experiment is about doing things differently in the dating realm, to see if a change in my behavior could solve my dating woes. So I took a deep breath and responded. I didn’t want to veer too far off my usual style of texts, so I typed a short, noncommittal, “ha!” and quickly pressed send, before I changed my mind about not mentally declaring him dead to me from that moment on.

It’s official. “Do it for #ItsTotallyMe!” is totally my version of “Do it for the Vine!”

Unfortunately, that three-character text didn’t carry the subtext I hoped. Dan couldn’t read between the lines, though maybe that’s because the text was only one line. To my disbelief, he continued to text me like nothing happened between us. “Dammit. Of course texting would fail me,” I thought to myself.

I tried to resume my day with business as usual, but Dan seemed to be in full conversation mode. My annoyance grew after each new text from him arrived, and over the course of a few hours, I found myself in a vicious cycle. I’d hear my phone’s familiar text notification, get excited because I thought I’d received a message from a friend I actually like, and then feel my heart drop from disappointment as I saw his name on my phone screen.

Eventually, I felt a wave of indignation rise inside me as I looked. Who does this guy think he is? Why does he think I’ll be perfectly okay with being his second choice? But insecurities crept up as I saw this rejection, which I started to read as not being “good enough” for him, as part of a larger pattern. I thought we had a few successful dates, and we kept in constant contact in between. In spite of this, he kept actively looking for new people to date. Is this another sign that men will always see me as less of a catch and therefore never first choice? I felt my inferiority complex kicking in as tears welled up in my eyes.

This is where I usually disappear from the person’s life. There’s no question that he’s just not that into me. So I did something uncharacteristic. I thought about a friend of mine (aside from Katie) with whom I often exchanged dating horror stories. She never hesitated to tell men (read: boys) what she really thought of their behavior toward her. So I decided to take a page from her book. I took a deep breath, let my fingers fly across my phone’s keyboard, and pressed send before I could change my mind. (Take that prone-to-overthinking brain!).

“I have to admit that I am surprised to be hearing from you. When I last heard from you, I was hurt that you thought it was okay to cancel a date with me last minute for someone you didn’t know as well as me. You obviously have a right to see whomever you want, but it was frankly disrespectful to wait until the day of to cancel (after I reached out) and then reappear without addressing that. And it’s not okay.”

I got a reply almost immediately and jumped when I heard my phone vibrate. “I clearly don’t have the nerves for this,” I thought as I gingerly picked up my phone and peeked at the text notification with only one eye open.

“Yeah, you’re right,” was Dan’s lackluster reply. But I didn’t care! I was too busy celebrating this milestone.

OMG! I stood up for myself!

OMG! I shared how I feel!

OMG! I practiced healthy vulnerability!

Before this, I had never been able to tell a guy I’ve been dating that he did something messed up without being gaslighted. I would always end up regretting saying something because the guy would respond to me standing up for myself by creating a confusing, derailing argument. Until now. The streak has been broken! Saying what I truly think and feel doesn’t have to end horribly! Who woulda thunk?

Even if things don’t work out with Dan, I could end right here and declare that #ItsTotallyMe is a success in helping me gain more confidence and learn more about what I want in a partner. I realized that I want to be with a person I can speak my mind to without feeling afraid that the person will lash out.

But don’t worry, I’m not ending right here. I must admit I wanted to keep seeing how things develop with Dan, despite his dick move. And besides, my first meeting with my matchmaker Emma was coming up — maybe I could *gasp* end up dating more than one person at a time?!

Stay tuned!

The night before I had drunk too much whiskey and tried to dance the semester away at an East Village club with several twenty-something queer friends. The after-effects of my debauchery were intense. I hadn’t managed to leave my apartment and it was late into the afternoon. My head throbbed and I decided in a hung over, self-pitying way that while I was capable of intense outbursts of unbridled fun and wildness, I was forever to be punished with solitude and deep bouts of loneliness.

I read Gala’s opening letter to readers, which included the heart-busting sentence, “There are those of us who have always felt alone in the world, intrepid, aliens in every community we find ourselves in,” and then scrolled down to the entry for Gemini. In it, Gala writes about a rare phone call from her brother, his offer to help her if she needs money, and the relief of this gesture:

Isn’t this what all lost children do? Find a way to survive. Partner up. Hunker down. Escape. Gala’s story about her brother spoke to me because like many children, who emerged from less-than-ideal childhoods, I have long thought of my brother as the Hansel to my Gretel. Somehow long ago, we’d made a pact in the woods to protect each other. It was a fairy tale we told ourselves.

My brother recently sent me a text that he had the potential in his new business to do quite well, and that if that happened, he would take care of me. I didn’t press it. We text occasionally and talk on the phone hardly ever. When we see each other, I feel close to him, but we have long chunks of time when we don’t communicate at all.

Part of me didn’t believe him, and part of me felt stunned by the love of it. And yet I’ve learned to expect no help from anyone, and to believe only in myself. Why is my brother still offering to take care of me? Does my life look that precarious? Is this what adult children do? Is there something inherently worrisome about me as a single, divorced, American mom? I wondered.

Maybe I didn’t believe him because I’ve lost the ability to believe that anyone I know in this country can succeed in that wild, hopeful, “American Dream,” middle-class way. If 47% of Americans (and I’m one of them) would have a hard time coming up with $400 in an emergency, and our government continues to care so little for this reality, how could I believe in a windfall, familial or otherwise?

And yet like many Americans, I suspect I am tethered to two conflicting ideas. Sometimes I think if I scrimp and save enough I just might make the whole bootstraps-bullshit American Dream a reality. Other times, I wallow in my own financial failures. Why do I still live paycheck to paycheck? What is wrong with me that I have so much debt?

And I’m honestly confused about how families help each other; aside from splitting the cost of my undergraduate state school education in the early ’90s, my parents have never given me any money. I have friends who have used family money for apartment down payments or college tuition for their children or who are expecting inheritances when their parents pass away. But then I have other friends, like me, who go it alone.

I know people who are broke, but if they had any extra money would give it to their kids or friends in a heartbeat. I went on a bad date with a man who’d been unemployed for five years, living with his sister, and paying no rent. When I asked him if he ever felt like he should contribute, he waved me off, “It’s family. This is what we do.”

I ran away so fast from that date that I fell into a snowbank. I couldn’t see his arrangement with his sister as anything other than a grift. I feared he was just looking for another woman to feed and house him. Still, I understand that in the absence of any substantial government intervention — a living minimum wage, national subsidized child care, and a real commitment to affordable housing — our nebulous and complicated relationships with family members are what’s left.

As I wrote this essay, I scrolled through my friends’ Instagram feeds. It was Pride in NYC, and I was filled with a weeping love for the queer friends that have held me, loved me, and become my family. I take in the shirtless photos and signs that read “Gays Against Guns: GAG!” and “Yo Soy Pulse!”

From my window I could hear the roars of joy from the parade. I have a stupid, stubborn hope that love will win, that the world is changing for the better, and that we are in the last ugly, violent, bloody throes of rape culture, patriarchy, and a racist system that is dying, but so slowly that it almost doesn’t feel like a death at all.

All is not lost, I keep telling myself. There are new maps and new families and those who are lost will find a way to catch up.

Lost Boy

Once my brother and I actually got lost in the woods. We were at Alleghany State Park for my father’s annual office picnic. I would later appreciate the event for its drunken contours, but at the time it just seemed like a really good party for kids. Unlimited cans of grape soda! Pringles poured out of the canister into giant bowls! Let’s dig a hole to China on the beach! One year my father puked into our plastic beach bucket as my mother drove the car home with us in the front seat with her. Another year, my mother cried on the sidewalk outside of our house, and my father had to beg her to come inside.

There was a path into the woods from the picnic site. We took it. There were other kids too. Chatter. Bravado. A girl my age named Beth whose father owned a boat. She had a beautiful Dorothy Hamill haircut that worked because her hair was thick, not fine like mine. And there was a new young stepmom who wore high-heeled sandals. Her little sister Amy was cute and petulant. I wanted to impress them and got caught up in the stories we each told about the stupidity of sixth grade.

It was late in the day and I was walking, so this was definitely post-recovery, after a doctor in Toronto diagnosed my rare neurological condition and gave me a magical pill that changed my life and made it possible for me to walk again. Maybe I was high on that freedom. I could walk anywhere! Maybe I remembered the little patch of woods between houses in our old neighborhood where a boy who was two years older and I stripped naked and pressed our bodies together. Front side. Back side. Electricity.

Maybe I understood at that early moment in the woods with that boy that I was a witch or that I’d pretty much do anything for sex because it meant pleasure and escape. Probably not. Everything I did then was underground, unconscious, and subterranean. Motives were not something I could identify accurately in myself until my late thirties.

“My dad will be mad,” Beth said, speaking the universal ’80s code for spanking and grounding. They wanted to go back, so we waved good-bye to their haltered, sunburned shoulder blades and kept walking. Maybe we were running away. Maybe we were on an adventure. Maybe my brother was excited that I could finally walk somewhere with him. He’d been playing in the woods next to a new housing development up the road from our house for the last year and coming home with small snakes, which he kept in shoeboxes with holes in them until they escaped. Maybe we’d already seen E.T. and Goonies and we believed in the power of children to change the narrative of adult lives. Our parents didn’t seem to like each other very much. Maybe we wanted to walk away from that sad reality. Maybe we were just having fun.

Somehow we got turned around. We wound up on a different path by trees we didn’t recognize. The woods got thicker and the path more narrow. Eventually, the path opened up onto what we thought was the office picnic, but instead was an empty ranger’s station and a road with no cars on it. The scene was eerily quiet, like a set from The Twilight Zone. There was no park ranger or any other hikers, and definitely no other kids. The sun was starting to set. We chose another path, and then another, but they all looked unfamiliar and wrong. We were not calm kids. My brother regularly entertained fears of getting kidnapped by a man in a nondescript white van. I had never recovered from watching Poltergeist, and believed at any moment that a tree could swallow me whole.

We followed one of the paths back toward the abandoned Ranger station. We looked closely at the map pinned to the wall, but we couldn’t read it. We didn’t know where we’d been, and the map didn’t look anything like the ones my parents kept crumple-folded under the passenger seat of our Toyota Corolla. It had blue lines on it to indicate topography, but no “x” to indicate where we stood.

“We have to just walk,” I said.

“But which way?” My brother looked more panicked than I’d ever seen him.

“If we just get on a path and stick with it, we’ll find them,” I lied, and started to lead us down the path that felt right to me.

My brother fell behind me on the path, silently crying. It was almost dark. “We can’t be alone in the woods at night,” he sobbed.

“Don’t cry,” I maybe said.

He rushed forward and hugged me, clung to me really, and stammered, “You have to help us. You have to figure it out. You’re the oldest. It’s your job.”

I hugged him back and patted his back. I realized that for all of his farting bravado in our family room, his figure-four leg locks, and his ability to dribble around all of the soccer players in his league, he was still only 9. Something in me clicked into place, and I knew that no matter how afraid I was, I had to hide it from him, and get us back to the picnic. I was the oldest. He was too scared to think straight. I had to find our way.

Somehow I picked the right path. It’s possible that all of the paths led to the picnic area and we just needed to commit to one, and I’d helped us do that. I started to recognize certain trees. I kept us moving, and I refused to cry.

It was dark when we got back to the picnic site and all of the parents were packing up. It never occurred to us that any of them would come looking for us, and they didn’t.

“Beth said you were just behind her,” my mother said as she folded our lawn chairs into the hatchback. “So we’ve just been waiting.”

We drove home in silence. Our parents were mad, but they couldn’t grasp or we couldn’t speak to the enormity of what we’d just experienced. We were lost in the woods. We thought it was forever, but we found our way back. We were Hansel and Gretel without the breadcrumbs. What scared me most of all was that our parents didn’t even really get it. I saw then that they couldn’t protect us forever, and that we were capable of getting hopelessly lost, while they were distracted or fighting or having fun.

I am your little mother. Take my hand, and I’ll show you the way. I’m clever. I know the witch. I am the moon. I can churn butter and sew a dress. I’m plump and dimpled, though there are hard lines across my body. Let’s call them Chin, Nose, and Face. Don’t cross them. I am the map. The topography’s inside of me. Let’s call it blood. I am the lost twin. I’m Gemini and I’m always looking for you and you and you and you. I was made for pleasure. I was made for work. I can find a needle in a haystack and any boy, in any woods, any where. Except for that one little boy, who got away.

Re-Birth

My pregnancy began as a twin pregnancy. We lost the other baby at the end of the fourth month. We’d already named him and the loss terrified and saddened me in a way I’d never experienced before. Still, I didn’t allow myself to grieve. No one knew why that baby died, and the rest of the pregnancy was high risk. I felt I needed to focus on the other baby, and do everything I could to get her out of me alive.

Recently, because she is 7 now and we were talking about how she was born, I decided to tell my daughter about her twin. I wanted her to know, but I didn’t want to tell her too soon. I explained it in as matter of fact way as I could. You were once a twin. There was another baby, but he died before you were born.

In the way that all major parenting events don’t happen the way you thought they would, my daughter’s response surprised me.

First, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” which was a perfectly good question.

“I wanted you to be old enough to understand,” I managed, and then added, “And also I was sad for a long time about it and it took me a while.”

Then, maybe because she is a Leo, she said, “It’s okay Mama, I like being an only child.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice, isn’t it?” I said. It was a Saturday morning. We were cuddling in bed.

“What was his name?”

“Sal.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It’s from a book Daddy loved and also that was his grandfather’s name.”

“You like old names.”

“Yeah, we do.”

And then she suggested we pretend she was being born again and I went with it because what else was going on that Saturday morning? She play acted a baby’s high-pitched cries and I pretended to push her out again under the quilt and it was silly and healing in a way I couldn’t have ever imagined.

Since then, she has told close friends about her lost twin. These sweet girls have listened intently and one even added a story about the baby her mother lost before she was born. In my daughter’s later re-enactments, her twin was born with her and then died. She treats this story as her own, mutable and changing depending on each performance. I have not corrected the details. We can return to those later. It’s her story. Perhaps not even mine to write about. That was her twin, her brother, her lost boy. Gone long ago into the cosmos, where desire and longing and mourning swirl around in a galactic stew. If this galaxy could speak to us, it might say, Who are you looking for? What have you lost? Where are you going?

Recently, while walking in a cemetery with her dad, she asked, “Do you think he’s here?” Around that same time, she told us that she doesn’t like it when people say she’s lucky to be an only child. “Because I might have wanted a brother,” she said to us as she bounced on top of one of the couch cushions.

I suspect that her feelings about her lost twin will change and change again. I can’t know what it’s like for her to have been a twin, and to have lost a future brother before he was born. Did she feel him swimming next to her? Were they communicating inside the womb? Did she know when his heart stopped beating? These are cosmic questions. Hard to ask and unanswerable.

I suppose in talking to her and in writing about it, I’ve accepted that loss, grieved for that baby that never quite was, and still he was a little boy who got away, the one I couldn’t save. I was not to be his little mother. Nor she.

Star Light

When I was 17, I visited a psychic in the small town of Lily Dale, New York, the spiritualist capital of the world and just a half hour away from my hometown. I went to the same psychic my father saw once a year. I’m not sure why he went — he’s a hardcore atheist and scoffs at most anything that’s not science-based, but he liked her and said she was the real deal. I believe her name was Anna May Dodd, though my Googling can’t confirm this, and she’s long since passed away. As a goth/punk teenager, my friends and I were drawn to Lily Dale though we often did no more than wander the grounds and marvel at the small tombstones in the pet cemetery.

She met me on her porch, and we stayed there for the duration of the reading. She told me nothing about my future, but she described my life to me in a way that felt miraculous. She understood the dynamics of my falling-apart family and she told me that I would make it out. She described my parents to a T, and when she got to my brother she paused to wave to a neighbor on the barely paved street, and then continued.

“You can’t forget about him when you go. He needs you. You have to take care of him.”

I nodded, struck by the urgency of her tone.

“Is something going to happen?” I asked.

She shook her head no. “I have a brother too,” she offered and moved onto something else. I left her porch that day stunned and grateful because I felt profoundly seen, visible somehow in this 70-year-old woman’s light. I felt similarly when I met my current therapist four years ago.

Was that psychic right? Did my brother need my protection? Who was watching out for me? I still feel that I failed my brother because I left our small shitty town and went to college in the midst of my parents’ messy and bitter divorce. Three years later, he left for school too. Perhaps I’ve cast a psychic net of care and love around him. I hope so, but I really can’t say for sure. We’re adults now. We have a close, but careful relationship. There’s so much I want to say to him, but I’m not brave enough yet to do it.

Still, I no longer feel like we’re living in the woods. We’re not those lost children anymore. In fact, when I text him about his memory of that day, he doesn’t remember any of the details. Was it an office picnic? Were there other kids involved? he texts me back, and I’m left to wonder why my own memory is so intense and cinematic. Is it because I write personal essays? Does my brain excel at turning images into stories? My brother is often the only fact checker I have, and unlike me, he lives very much in the present.

I am not your little mother, though I can be very tender. If she calls me Mama, I do what she wants. I’m weak that way. You’re such a smother mother, he once joked. You’re drawn to lost boys and Peter Pans. You don’t need a map anymore. You know the way. The path is lit up. There are fireflies or small lanterns. X marks the spot. Keep walking. Keep moving. Look up at the stars. The galaxy sees you. Ask your questions. Wait for answers in the stars.

“Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays . . . ”

This might be the truest line from any song written for this time of year — a line that fills some with warm waves of nostalgia and others with cold shivers of dread. Those on Team Dread aren’t necessarily from families that treat(ed) them badly. Many are simply exhausted at the thought of having to travel YET AGAIN this year, as they have been required to do every year since they left home. The emotional consequences of not going — perish the thought! — can last throughout the year and into future holidays.

And so we trudge home, through airports and/or holiday traffic with kids and gifts. Why? Because we’re the one(s) who left.

Left.

The word loomed over me for years.

It didn’t matter that I’d left to go to college or that I’d stayed in the new city for a job. It didn’t matter that I was only two hours away from my hometown or that there was a reliable, affordable train connecting it to my new home in Chicago. What mattered was that I LEFT. This inescapable fact meant that it was my responsibility forever and ever (amen!) to make the trek back to Indiana. It was exhausting long before the first time my mom disowned me right before the Christmas of 2011.

The cost of having to return was inconsequential to my parents. Taking off work from hourly jobs without paid vacation or sick days meant that the trip home wasn’t just the $25 or so in gas and tolls or even the time I spent driving exhausted when I shouldn’t have. To go home for a couple days at Christmas could easily cost me $500–1,000, depending on the day of the week Christmas fell and which jobs I was working at the time. But, no matter. I LEFT — therefore, I must return.

‘Left.’ The word loomed over me for years.
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And when I showed up, I better be in a festive mood, goddamnit! Four 60-hour weeks in a row in a retail job listening to Mariah Carey’s holiday album on repeat (OMG it’s only like 42 minutes long) before driving five hours home at half speed in a blizzard resulting in my not being able to stomach Christmas carols? SUCK IT UP! No understanding, no mercy. So much for the sentiment behind those carols, I thought to myself.

The imperative to return home for Christmas was made additionally exhausting, stressful, and expensive because it’s only a month after Thanksgiving. It wouldn’t be until after I graduated college that I was allowed to take advantage of our annual Thanksgiving location: 40 minutes from my new home at my favorite aunt’s house. During college, I was expected to drive home on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving (by far the worst traffic of any day of the year) so that I could ride with my parents two hours back in the direction FROM WHENCE I HAD COME LESS THAN 12 HOURS EARLIER to my aunt’s. Why? I needed to wake up at my parents’ house Friday morning for the annual Christmas decorating bonanza.

Couldn’t we have done the decorating a different day? Or perhaps I could have met my parents at Thanksgiving and then just driven to their house when we all left Thursday evening? Not a chance. It wasn’t worth the anxiety spike that would begin as early as Halloween when I would try and broach the subject of compromise.

I would continue to perform holidays as required to keep the peace for 15 years.

Since 2011’s disowning, when I was told not to feel I had to come home for Christmas, my relationship with holidays has changed — sometimes abruptly, sometimes gradually. I’ve become friends with and heard from folks who have their own stories of being the one who left and the one expected to return, no matter the circumstances. Sharing these experiences has given me a healthier perspective on familial expectations and responsibilities.

I’ve arrived at a place where I now regularly make the case for not going home for the holidays.

Even those without strained relationships have a weight to their words when they talk about “going home” this time of year. I think it begins right there with that phrase.

If I have lived somewhere else longer than I lived in my hometown, why must I call it “home?” The first time I said I had to “go home” when I was already at my parents’ house, bystanders would have thought I’d socked my mom in the stomach and declared I was leaving forever. I hadn’t done it intentionally; usually I was more deliberate with my words and actions in her house so as to make it through without a blow-up of any kind. It would take a few more years before I unapologetically called the city in which I had lived for more than a decade “home” in her presence.

While my mom may be atypical due to a likely undiagnosed mental illness, I have heard similar stories over the years — and not just about parents.

Extended family members participate in the guilt trips as well, and theirs can come with consequences beyond just making you feel bad for not showing up. If we aren’t there at the required moment, we can lose our relationships with them over time — not maliciously, but as a result of our not being physically present at the appointed time(s).

If I have lived somewhere else longer than I lived in my hometown, why must I call it ‘home?’
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Aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. often don’t make an effort to maintain connections — even with the current ease and prevalence of social media. And some of our older relatives understandably never bothered to sign up for Facebook and don’t have the hang of texting. As such, we’re told that our relationships with them, their significant others, and their children — not to mention our place in our families — is largely contingent on our physical presence.

But while this may have made sense 20 or 30 years ago, it’s absurd now. Expensive long-distance phone calls are a thing of the past, easily replaced now with free FaceTime chats. And airline tickets are generally far more affordable during non-holiday periods than during the hectic holiday season. So why engage in the Come Home Or Else holiday theater?

The idea of getting EVERYONE together at the designated day and time is rooted in a way of life that is extremely rare. We allow nostalgia and guilt-tripping to convince us that there is a right day and time to be with family. More and more I ask myself: Who cares when we see each other as long as we see each other? And wouldn’t the loving approach be to set aside a time when those who are coming together don’t experience hardship to make that time happen?

I’m not saying not to go home or to cut off those family members who can do little more than send a card, but I’m not here for the traditional practice of guilting those of us who have left. That guilt is unnecessary in a day and age where travel works in more than one direction — and is likely easier for the older members of the family who don’t have jobs without paid time off or children in tow.

Perhaps if those people fueling the guilt trips cannot engage with you throughout the year — cannot support your life and your choices and your happiness — they’re not all that important. Maybe our holidays should be spent with those who make room for us in their lives whether it’s convenient or not and no matter the distance between us.

This year I will be with my chosen family, rather than the one that raised me. True, it’s not the first season I’ve spent away from my hometown, but it finally feels like this is happening on my terms. I’m not joining up with others who have nowhere to go in a group effort to not feel alone; I have made an affirmative choice to spend time with my loved ones here.

I’m looking forward to this holiday more than any other in my adulthood that I can remember. I have found community with people who value me — and I can’t imagine anywhere I’d rather be.

Around 1:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day this year, I was crying in a blessedly secluded corner of New York’s bustling Port Authority. I’d missed my bus north by about five minutes and was inconsolable. Because I hadn’t gotten up a few minutes earlier, I’d missed my chance to eat with my family. I felt especially terrible because my grandmother was due for intense surgery in a few days, and nobody was sure what the outcome might be.

Sniffling, I called my girlfriend and arranged to meet her out on Long Beach for her family’s festivities. Although she’d had some difficulties over the past year with a few family members because of various aspects of her gender transition, by and large, you couldn’t ask for a more accepting family. Apparently, when you celebrate the holidays at a middle-aged lesbian couple’s house, queerphobia and invasive questions in general are kept to a minimum . . . and nobody talks about politics.

In fact, I’ve only met one family more accepting of transition — and that’s my own.

At last year’s holiday gatherings, even though I’d only been out to them for a month and change, I could count the number of times I was accidentally misgendered on one hand; my aunt, whose first words to me were “This will take some getting used to,” began correcting herself without prompting after just a few hours together. I was sad not to see them again this year, but happy to have found another accepting clan.

Acceptance isn’t something that often comes naturally from the families of those who are transgender. Scrolling through Facebook the day before, I scanned countless posts from friends who were nervous about (or resigned to) the familial horror show they were about to endure. Others talked about being cut off by their family members the night before Thanksgiving. “Holidays are the time I miss having family the most,” wrote one of my nonbinary friends.

Lest any cisgender readers think I merely have exceptionally depressing Facebook friends — well, maybe. But according to the most recent data available from the National Center for Transgender Equality, about one in five trans-identified people experience rejection from their families because of their gender identity. One in 10 suffer violence at the hands of family members after coming out. A quoted respondent said that after coming out, their parents “told me to leave and not come back. I spent the next six months homeless.”

Transgender people of color experience higher rejection rates than the average; 37% of Middle Eastern trans folks and 38% of Native Americans reported familial rejection. My heart breaks for all the Native protestors at Standing Rock, but especially the trans people who risked their lives in the face of frigid fire hoses and tear gas without even the love of their families to keep them warm.

Things are getting better; these numbers are significantly down from the NCTE’s previous survey, and 60% of trans people polled said they were supported. But when our families do reject us, they do it violently — and if nobody’s around to catch us when we’re pushed out, the fall can be deadly.

As we drove back to Brooklyn on that Thanksgiving, my girlfriend dozing in a food coma beside me in the back seat, my mind drifted to these kinds of numbers and how much luckier I am than so many of my siblings — my “chosen family.” I may be among those whose relationships ended as a result of my gender, but my biological family remains intact, and my ex and I are close friends. I thought back to this summer, when I attended my cousin’s wedding in Manhattan without fear of being cornered by some drunken uncle and berated for wearing a pink dress. How many ways could my life be endlessly worse than it is now?

For this reason, I reflected, I don’t often feel comfortable discussing my family with others in the trans community — especially my sisters, who are most likely to experience familial rejection. I’m touched that some of my closest friends count me as part of their chosen family, but every time that phrase is mentioned, I feel tremendous guilt that I’ve somehow held onto my mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and sundry cousins.

Well. I hung onto the ones on my mother’s side, anyway. After my father died almost five years ago, his side of the family fell out of touch with my mother and me, and nobody’s made much of an effort to get in contact with me since I started wearing skirts in public. I think four out of five of them voted for Trump anyway — but as much as I’d like to dismiss them out of hand as a bunch of out-of-touch white cisgender conservatives who don’t know what a cool chick I am these days, I still miss them. I know I won’t be welcome at my aunts’ houses anymore, so I won’t get a chance to play soccer again with my cousin, the athlete. I won’t have dinner at Grandma’s and hear her play lounge-lizard tunes on the piano after dessert. I can’t go back to the house in the country where I grew up.

But still, I kept more of my family than I could have hoped. Nobody hit me, nobody interrogated me every time they saw me, nobody adamantly refused to use my pronouns unless I acted or dressed a certain way. And so I find myself a privileged member of a group defined by its lack of privilege: a girl who cherishes her mother while her sisters long for their parents to talk to them like they’re people.

We have our chosen families — but how do you mend the hole your blood relatives make when they abandon you?

I’ve found myself trying to alleviate this (admittedly irrational) guilt by introducing my mother into my friends’ lives. When we talk on the phone, she goes out of her way to call me her daughter and tells me how angry she is that my friends “lost their mama bears.” She’s been dipping her toes into the waters of voice coaching, and I’m hopeful that she can help my community in a tangible sense, but I also just want the people I love to feel like they have a mother again. The winter holidays are about family and sharing, so why shouldn’t I share my family? As Hanukkah, Christmas, and other gift-giving holidays approach, can I gift-wrap my bloodline to share it with those I love?

Maybe these feelings are misplaced, and perhaps I should be focusing my energy elsewhere. I don’t know. All I’m certain of is that I’m one of the luckiest girls in the world, just because my biological family loves me — and that knowledge is enough to make me cry all over again.