We've curated a list of our narratives that have the highest and lowest Doe Print scores for the Curiosity value. Read these to expose you to stories from a wide variety of authors.

Doe Print Value - Curiosity

In January, I took my first dose of estrogen. I decided to start my transition and embark on my own journey with gender-affirming care, also known as hormone replacement therapy (HRT). The estrogen I’ve introduced to my body will achieve a certain level of physical change. I have never been happier in my entire life. 

I don’t believe giving the reason behind my transition is required, but I do want to talk openly about what motivated me to do this because I have a strong feeling that someone, even just one person, might benefit from my story. I know when I was first struggling with the decision to begin HRT that I felt that there was hardly anything out there that spoke to what I was personally feeling. My intention with this piece is to encourage people to take a deeper look into the meaning of identity, our self-imposed limitations and ultimately expand our understanding of what it means to be trans or to transition.

I’ll start by prefacing I came out as a gay man when I was 17. I came out as non-binary when I was 24. And now I’m coming out as trans at 28. It is very important to mention that there isn’t just one way to be trans, something that I even had a hard time understanding at the beginning. Our identities are forever changing, growing and expanding, and exploring my gender is simply the next chapter of my journey. I want this to be super clear: This is where I am presently with my identity and this may change, and that’s OK. It’s my journey, my own experience, and it is by no means meant to be representative of all trans experiences. I hope you will afford me the same leniency and space to explore my identity that I had to learn to afford myself. 

Today, I identify as queer, non-binary, trans, trans-feminine and transgender. I no longer identify as gay. And, transparently, I’m having a hard time identifying as a trans woman at the moment because I believe the term “woman” is indicative of wishing to achieve yet another level of the gender binary. Although, like anything mentioned in this essay, my feelings towards this may change in the future. I learned from past mistakes to never speak to my identity in finite terms; rather, I embrace my continuous growth and evolution. For the sake of this piece I will be using the term "trans" when referring to myself, my experience and the transgender, GNC (gender-nonconforming), non-binary community. 

In our society, regardless of how much I wish it wasn’t the case, there are two recognized genders: man and woman. And while there have been strides made to be inclusive of trans individuals, I feel that a lot of people's understanding of what it means to be trans is, simply put, a man trying to be a woman, or a woman trying to be a man. It is easy for people to understand that because it's just a matter of checking the “F” box instead of the “M,” or vice versa. But it’s so much more than that. What I’d like to pose is, what if there were more options? What happens when the “M” and “F” boxes feel like they don’t apply to you?

If you’ll bear with me, I want to recount what I’ve experienced and the moments that ultimately led me to start gender-affirming care. I think we can all agree that 2020 was a hard year and, truthfully, I wasn’t prepared for it. Like for many of us, the solitude led to a lot of thinking. Fundamental questions would arise about my life and the life I wanted and, this time, I was forced to address them head-on.

Since I was a child, I’ve questioned my gender hundreds of times throughout my life. This is nothing new. The question of whether I was trans or not has come up for years and I would often satiate its persistence with “I don’t think so,” or, “I don’t have a hatred for my penis so I must not be.” These answers would suffice until a few months or years would pass and that question bore its way back into my mind. 2020 forced me to look at it and address it. For the first time, I couldn’t distract myself from that line of questioning. My heart knew that it needed answers and it absolutely petrified me. 

I haven’t told a lot of people this, but growing up, I used to spend my time after school in the shower crying, praying and begging God not to be gay. Growing up Catholic, I thought that would work. I remember promising myself that I would never be gay, as if it was a switch that I could just turn on and off. I was so afraid of not being “perfect” in the eyes of others. Think about how crazy that is. Let's just say, as I started to look back on my past, I began to see a pattern of denial.

One morning, I decided to give myself permission to explore this side of myself. “Maybe I am gay and so what?” I said on waking up. At that moment, everything changed, and I came out to my mom that morning. I literally woke up from a sex dream of a guy I had a crush on in high school, and when I woke up there was no denying it anymore. I loved men! It was like a eureka moment to me, even though my queerness was probably obvious to everyone except myself. I just hadn’t come to accept it.

My journey with gender identity has felt similar to this. And this time, as the questions around my transness would arise, my denial would slowly erode. I’ve always been someone who was different in both the straight world and even the gay world. I’ve never really felt connected to gay male culture, and even in that world I’m not the “standard.” It was like I came out of the womb just looking for somewhere to belong. But as I’ve gotten older, I care less and less about belonging and care more about being happy. 

Oftentimes, my desire to appear perfect to other people has led me to cater to what I believe other people want instead of actually listening to what I want. The fear of no longer seeming perfect, or no longer being desirable to others, was enough to dictate my identity, and ultimately have ramifications to my mental health. In short, I was deathly afraid of being considered unlovable. 

The sad truth is I didn’t believe that trans people were considered “loveable” to other people. It’s the reality that I, until recently, hadn’t seen a trans person in pop culture or in real life that experienced the type of love that all other people are free to experience. It was the irrational belief that if I were to transition, no one would love me, and I would just need to be OK living a lonely existence. In reality, I was in such denial of who I was that I believed I would be happier being what I thought someone else wanted just to be considered worthy of their love. This is the farthest thing from true. Trans people are loveable. 

It took knowing that real trans people of all experiences have fulfilling, healthy and loving relationships that I was able to finally address this fake belief. I had to reprogram my own mind and deconstruct this fallacy, one that likely came from the often sad and tragic narratives about trans people force-fed through the media. Many trans characters in mainstream entertainment are cast in such a negative light—most get murdered, find addiction and die, or get a disease and die. In this context, how is someone supposed to believe they are worthy of things as simple as a loving relationship? The lack of inclusion and variation in trans narratives is the very reason I knew I needed to share this vulnerable part of myself with you.

Another dangerous belief that delayed my gender-affirming care is that being transgender means having an aversion or hatred for the sex with which I was biologically born—that a hatred for my body was required in order to qualify for the right to transition. To really drive this home and make it as simple as possible for you: I do not hate my penis. Confused? Here’s the deal. 

Most of us trans and non-binary people have complicated relationships with our bodies to begin with, and most people often assume we just detest them, that we simply view ourselves in the mirror with disgust, loath our genitals and regard our bodies as something we can never accept. That we might happily use these parts for sexual pleasure is often shocking and hard for some to compute. And while my genitalia is not a source of gender dysphoria for me personally, it can be for many trans individuals. But it is not the default, and it is not a qualification to determine whether you are trans enough.

For those who don’t know, “Gender dysphoria is the feeling of discomfort or distress that might occur in people whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics.” It’s nearly impossible for me to explain how it feels to experience, but I will do my best. 

I didn’t experience gender dysphoria in that way, but I did when it came to other parts and aspects of my male body. From the beginning, I was born in a body that was “non-traditionally male.” Meaning, I’m not tall, don’t have big muscles and I don’t have a lot of body hair. My body innately started at a more feminine baseline, which is not the case for many trans-feminine people. And while I never developed that hatred for my male parts in a similar way to what common trans narratives portray, I still experience gender dysphoria. 

The onset of secondary male sex characteristics, like hair loss and thicker body, has affected me. I think it’s often been used as a joke in my family because my level of anxiety when it comes to these things has always been extreme and can appear comical to someone on the outside. And, please, before your mind confuses this as an issue of mere vanity, let me explain.

These particular secondary sex characteristics aren’t the only thing that has prompted gender dysphoria for me throughout the years, but the impact of these particular traits has left ramifications to my mental health and has left me to venture into the dark spaces of my mind where I would rather not go. 

As these secondary sex characteristics became more prevalent in me over the years, I realized I was ultimately going to have to age like a man. No matter what I did, I was destined on a course towards an inevitable end I knew that I didn’t want for myself. Suddenly, the feminine disposition I was born with, which comes naturally with being young, didn’t matter. In fact, it was slipping away from me with each passing day. There was nothing I could do to hold onto what femininity I did have. The amount of anxiety I felt waking up would grow in intensity with each buzz of my morning alarm until it became debilitating. I was bedridden, in a weeks-long depression. I felt trapped and subscribed to a future I didn’t want.

The hardest part of all of this has been coming to personally accept this part of myself. It took months of fighting, trying to convince myself that this wasn’t who I am, and doing my best to justify why I am not trans. Looking back, I think I would have inevitably gotten to this point in my life and possibly would have gotten here earlier with my current understanding. And I’m very sure that no one chooses this life for themselves—quite honestly, it’s not easy. This is just truly and purely who I am. 

And as I continue this journey, I have begun to love my transness. Once ashamed, I now see my transness as my superpower. I believe that I am neither man, nor woman, but simply me. I believe trans people transcend our understanding of society and experience life beyond the limitations of most people. I feel as though I have achieved a "me" who is completely uninhibited and untethered from society's expectations, and I believe I am capable of anything, endlessly. While my path and journey are hard ones, I feel so blessed to be transgender. 

I believe through my vulnerability and sharing my story, I may possibly help someone, possibly even save someone. And I fully intend to commit my life to the visibility and inclusion of transgender people of all backgrounds. I realize where I am privileged, and I intend to use my privilege to uplift my community. I will share my story, loud and proud, for all of us to hear and to remind people, we are here. And for those people who have struggled with their identity like I have, or identify as anything of than cis-gendered, I want to let you know that I see you. 

It doesn't matter if no one else can, because I do.

LGBTQ Voices

My Trans Journey With Gender-Affirming Care

I was six or seven years old when I first learned that I was adopted. My siblings and I were playing in our family’s suburban backyard, equipped with a swimming pool and a clubhouse, while my mother and father gathered palm fronds and threw them in a garbage bin. When they were finished, my dad took off his gloves and corralled my two brothers, my sister and me over to a spot by the lake. As I sat crisscrossed and picked at blades of grass, my parents informed us that while they did not bring us into the world, they were our “real” parents in every other sense of the word. 

Then they offered to answer our questions, and that’s how we learned that we had three other half-siblings, and all sharing the same biological mother. I’ll call her Jane. Jane was unfit to take care of us, for reasons I wasn’t yet ready to understand, but my mom had assured me that one day I’d be able to meet her and find out for myself.  

Before we moved to the suburbs, my parents owned and operated a jewelry business together in the city. My mom and dad had been married for six months when they applied through the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services to become foster parents. Shortly thereafter, they were in a meeting at their bank when HRS called to deliver news that there was a healthy baby girl in need of a foster home. Two weeks later, my parents picked up my five-month-old sister, Rita. 

My birth mom had attempted to take on the onus of parenting my older sister by herself, just as she had twice before, until the state eventually terminated her parental rights. This time didn’t prove to be any different. When Rita was 12 weeks old, Jane called the police sounding agitated and incoherent. When a squad car finally pulled up, Jane ran out into the street and set my sister on the hood. She told the police and an HRS protective investigator that she was at her “wit’s end” because my sister wouldn’t stop crying. Once again, Jane relinquished her child to the care of the state. 

My parents loved Rita. They’d bring her to work with them, keeping her in the back office of the jewelry shop and taking turns caring for her while the other worked up front. Photo albums and home videos from that time reflect the happiness and love that my parents poured into this new life. They nurtured Rita in the ways that my birth mom couldn’t. 

My mom stayed in touch with Jane’s brother John. Uncle John lived just a few hundred miles away, and would often drive up to see us, bearing gifts and bizarre stories. He’d spent his early 20s investigating some of the first American UFO sightings, and recounted his excursions to anyone who would listen. We all loved Uncle John, and his presence in our lives reinforced the common link between the siblings. 

One day, a couple of months after Rita’s first birthday, Uncle John phoned my parents’ townhouse in the city. My mom answered. “Jane had another baby,” my uncle reported. “It’s a boy.”

I was 13 years old when I first heard Julian’s story. At this point, I’d spoken to my birth mom over the phone a handful of times, mostly on holidays. Our conversations could at best be described as whimsical, but the truth was she was mostly erratic and difficult to keep up with. My mom, who worked as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, explained to my siblings and me that Jane had schizophrenia. My dad never tried to conceal his disdain for her. When she’d call the house, he would intentionally let the phone ring until it went to voicemail. 

We were in the family minivan one afternoon when tensions had begun heating up, as they often did. My dad was angry that my younger brother Tommy and I had been skipping out on Sunday school. At the time, my dad was being sued by a former business partner who was trying to steal the company, and it was wearing on him. After I retaliated by confronting him about forwarding Jane’s calls, he finally collapsed under the weight of it all. 

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he yelled. My dad is six feet, four inches tall, and a powerhouse of a man. When he raised his sonorous baritone to a shout, it was terrifying. Then, in a slightly softer voice, he said, “She almost killed your brother Julian.”

By the time Jane gave birth to Julian, there were numerous hospital records expounding on her mental illness, and the hospital staff was instructed not to leave her alone with the baby. But through cunning, Jane managed to exit the hospital with Julian in her arms. At the height of winter, she got on a plane with my one-week-old brother and flew across the country, living as a  vagabond and sleeping on sidewalks. She kept this up for weeks until she finally capitulated and called my Uncle John to bail her out. He pleaded with her to come back and grant parental custody of Julian to my parents. 

When Jane handed off my brother at the airport, she told them that he had a cold. His diaper was many sizes too large and desperately needed to be changed.

The next morning, as my parents got ready to take Julian to the doctor, he stopped breathing. My dad was on the phone with an emergency dispatcher as my mom performed CPR on my newborn brother. My mom went with him as he was airlifted in a helicopter to the hospital. 

At five weeks old, Julian weighed less than his birth weight. He’d contracted pneumonia while in my birth mom’s care, and spent a week in the intensive care unit as my parents waited for him to recover. 

“One more day and he would’ve been dead,” my dad said in a broken voice. He was behind the steering wheel, sobbing now as he finished telling Tommy and me about how our brother had narrowly escaped death. I felt a lump rise to my throat, and I couldn’t speak. I’d never been so angry in my entire life, sitting there reliving my father’s trauma, trying to picture my life without Julian. 

As the years went on, I began dissecting my own feelings of rejection and guilt. There were countless instances in which my mom came home from a 13-hour workday to hysteria and chaos. Many objects were broken or completely destroyed from us fighting, playing or a combination of the two. It was becoming more and more apparent to my mom that while all of us were healthy, intelligent children, none of us had passed through Jane unscathed.

When my sister Rita got addicted to drugs and started stealing money out of my mom’s purse, my mom didn’t give up on her. She did everything she could for Rita, paying for multiple stints in rehab until Rita finally got clean. When Tommy got kicked out of school, my dad added 40 minutes to his morning commute, without protest, in order to take my younger brother to school the next district over. 

But my parents didn’t just deal with our bad days. They were right there for the good ones, too. When Julian displayed an affinity for acting, my mom and dad were in the audience when he performed as the lead in our high school play. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve looked up to find my parents settling into the crowd at one of my gigs. 

My parents chose us and accepted us, and never gave up on us. They kept my siblings and me together, and a collective sense of camaraderie has flourished among the four of us. We all share a bond that will forever unify us, distinguish us and strengthen us. 

The continual selflessness and support from my parents encouraged me from an early age to begin cultivating a sense of gratitude. It continues to inspire me to act selflessly. And while I occasionally contend with feelings of guilt and imposter syndrome, I never lose sight of how grateful I am to be here, every single day.

Doe Print Value - Openness

Ancestry

Tearjerkers

I Was Adopted: My Parents and the Significance of Selflessness

When Grandma Regina died, I stood over her grave, my belly swollen with my son Joshua, who was born the following month. Some 21 years later, in 1992, while I walked the streets of Warsaw with Josh, now a six-foot-tall college boy, Grandma Regina’s life took on a new meaning for us.

Grandma Regina was one of eight siblings born and raised in Warsaw, Poland. All my life I was told by Grandma, in her broken Polish accent, that she’d lost her entire family in her native Poland in the World War II Holocaust. 

She escaped by coming to the United States with her son, Louis, in 1910. Long before the Nazi slaughter, there was the bloodbath initiated by the violent Russian pogroms throughout the region when Poland was part of Russia. In the 19th century, when Russia took control of Poland, things started to change for the Jews. During the devastating pogroms of 1906, Grandma was terrified for her life. The horrific massacres, violence, rape and slaughter of Jews never slowed down in spite of what government officials promised. 

She begged her family to leave Poland, take her advice and follow her to the U.S. When the Nazis set their sights on the country, they sought to destroy all that was there and build it up again as a colonial homeland for Germans. Regina was a stocky five-foot-one, with dark brown hair and blue eyes and an agitated personality. The Grandma I knew was short-tempered and highly sensitive to anything that could appear not to go her way or smelled of anti-Semitism.

While my relationship with Regina wasn’t close, I admired her for believing in herself and doing what she knew was right for her and taking that action. Leaving everything and everyone she knew to go to a new country far away—and learning a new language—took a lot of guts.  For that, I’m eternally grateful. I was always curious about her roots that were also my roots.

Josh had also developed a keen interest in his Eastern European roots and became fascinated with Slavic languages. So we included Warsaw on the itinerary when Josh had just completed a summer language program in Russia, where I joined him. We traveled to the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and then Poland. 

On a lazy morning after a large breakfast, we visited the Old Town Market Place, which is one of the oldest parts of Warsaw.  As we sauntered down the street, Josh stopped and dug into his backpack.

“Hey mom, I have this address from Grandma Dorothy.  It has these names and addresses of some relatives she thinks live in Warsaw. She said she found it in Grandma Regina’s stuff after she died.” 

“Josh, no one is left of her family. The Nazi’s killed everyone,” I said with authority.

“Well, let’s just see if we can find it anyway,” he replied.

We pulled out our city map and plotted our approach. The names on the paper were Januz and Joseph, with the same last name as Regina’s before she married. Clearly, these people had been relatives. After wandering around for an hour, we found an apartment building with the same address. 

When we returned to our hotel later, we asked the concierge if she could find a phone number that matched the name and address. She said the switchboard was closed at night and to come back tomorrow. When we returned, I stopped by the desk again and Josh went up to our room. The concierge called again, and this time someone answered and identified himself as Joseph.

To be sure it was a relative with this name, I asked the concierge to ask the man if Regina’s name meant anything to him.

“No, stay at the hotel and he will come to see us.”

I was shocked and excited and trying to stay realistic. This person might still not be a relative of my grandmother’s.

As we had dinner before we returned to the hotel, we waited in our room for what seemed like forever, but it was only one hour when the concierge called us and said:

“The man is here. He says to have your son come down with you.”

I held my breath all the way down the elevator. When the doors opened to the lobby, people were milling about. I scanned the crowd, unsure who I was looking for. After the crowd thinned, my eyes fell on one person, an elderly man standing by a wall, watching people step out of the elevator. He was someone who I would have recognized anywhere. It was clear he belonged in my family. I smiled, and he just looked back at me. 

He didn’t answer. He just stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small photograph, pointed to the picture and looked at me. The photo was taken at my cousin Louise’s wedding. I pulled Josh close to translate. 

“Tell him that is me,” I pointed, “and that is Dorothy, Rose, Josephine, Louis, my cousin Louise and there is Regina.” I told Josh to tell him the photo was taken at my cousin’s wedding many years earlier when Grandma was still alive. Apparently, she or someone else had mailed it to him. 

Joseph had his arm around Josh and said to him in Russian, “What happened to Regina? The letters stopped 20 years ago. We kept writing, but heard nothing back.” 

I was wondering something, too. Why had Grandma never told us she was writing to her nephews all those years? Why had she said everyone had died in the war, yet clearly, these two people had survived? The only reason I could think of was her secretive personality. She never trusted anyone! I’m wondering if she thought there was danger? But to her family? Did anyone else know about this?  And, if she had trusted us, we could have enjoyed getting to know these men. And they would have been able to know us. 

It was obvious Grandma was writing to someone in Poland, her birthplace. What could they possibly do to her in the U.S.? And in terms of the language, Aunt Rose practically lives next door to the University of California at Los Angeles. I’ll just bet someone there reads Polish!  

Josh was as amazed, as I was, that this man standing in the hotel lobby was a relative, discovered across thousands of miles, and a Holocaust survivor. Joseph had asked his daughter Aleksandra, called Ola, to meet him at the hotel, since she spoke English. She was a scientist for Proctor & Gamble. Ola didn’t know about the correspondence, so it had never occurred to her to look up relatives in the United States.

The four of us spent hours talking about our lives, and I shared what I knew about my grandmother. 

A couple of days later, Ola invited us to Joseph’s home to meet what family members were in town. As it was summer, many were on vacation. Joseph gathered his younger brother Januz, Ola’s husband and her daughter, as well as close friends, to join together and share stories. 

I learned that Joseph and his brother Januz are my mother’s first cousins, the sons of one of Grandma’s brothers and the only survivors in the family. Some siblings and relatives fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and died there. Again, speaking with Ola’s help, Joseph told us he survived the war by serving as a colonel in the Red Army.  He was very proud of that service. As Joseph was in the army, he spoke Russian and some German and jumped between all three languages, sometimes within one sentence.  

Januz, who spoke a little English, told us he was 12 when the war broke out. He was taken high up into the Ural Mountains to work in a mine, which is how he survived. Today, he’s an attorney, but he’s not allowed to practice law in the city of Warsaw because he is Jewish. 

Ola told us that the Nazis devised ways to keep the camps as secret as they could—they crowded people into trains to write postcards to their families, sent them to work camps and told them they would see family again after the war. This way, they dispelled suspicion about the death camps. The family had some of these postcards written by cousins, aunts and uncles who died in the death camps. It was a different story for women, who learned when the soldiers were coming and that they would be killed. Instead of suffering their fate, some killed themselves before the soldiers arrived. We saw photographs of these beautiful young women—some relatives—before the war. 

In spite of the tragic stories, the gathering was very warm and welcoming. We sat in Joseph’s living room surrounded by nieces, nephews and brothers. Josh and I shared about our families and what we knew about Regina and her life. Josh’s connections to Polish Jewish roots were now a reality for him. It was normal for me to have a European grandmother to identify my lineage. But Joshua’s grandmother, my mother, Dorothy, was a modern woman with a career. My Grandma made matzo balls from scratch and created her own horseradish.

“It was amazing to find these relatives,” Josh said. “At the moment, I felt it was a blur. But once it was clear what had happened, and how haphazard and unplanned and really unlikely it was, I think it made it really incredible.”

While my mother was born in the United States, Regina from Warsaw gave me more of a connection to what happened to European Jews. Josh didn’t have that same connection, but his amazement at meeting his distant relatives, he said, brought it much closer to home for him. 

While finding these relatives was a gift for me, the real gift came from Josh’s appreciation of his lineage and his sense of being proud of his heritage. He and I have a new connection that we talk about and share. I’ve even been able to stay connected to Ola. In fact, when she came to New York on business and I was living in Washington, D.C., at the time, I flew up and we spent a day together. 

Another generation that was touched by the Holocaust. It’s a family I never knew I had.

I Discovered the Family I Never Knew I Had

The first five years of my life were great. My mom and dad had good jobs at a senior center and we had a beautiful house. We would go on vacations, and I even remember traveling to Disneyland, riding the teacups and wearing Minnie ears that my dad bought me. But after I turned five, my uncle came into my life, and everything changed. 

I had never met Junior before, and my family never talked about him. So when he walked in my Nana’s door, I was curious. He told us funny stories about his time in the Army. He would take me anywhere I wanted to go and buy me whatever I wanted. He was a charmer. My favorite uncle, Tyrone, voiced his concerns, but no one batted an eye. Then my whole childhood changed. 

At the time, Junior was living with my grandparents. One day, when I was in his room watching cartoons, he picked me up, sat me on his lap and started tickling me. He looked at me and told me he loved me, but “not like a niece.” I was so confused. “What do you mean, uncle?” I asked him. “I love you more than anything! To the moon and stars. You’re my favorite person,” he replied. “I love you, too, uncle,” I told him. Then he kissed me, and stuck his tongue in my mouth. I didn’t know what to do. I was frozen. Then he started touching me. I was so scared and confused. He told me never to talk about our little secret. 

The same encounters started happening more frequently, and he started getting more abusive. Until I was 11 years old, Junior raped, abused, tortured, sodomized and mind-controlled me. He would throw me in an ice bath or a dark closet if I behaved badly. He would let the neighbor lady downstairs use me. If I tried to tell anyone, he would threaten to kill me. I remember going to my happy place when it happened. 

My parents had become addicts and always spent their money on drugs instead of bills. I remember coming home from school a few times and we were locked out of our homes. When we lost our home again, I had to stay with Junior for a while. My dad has been clean for 13 years and my mom for six, but it felt like I was living in a nightmare. I won’t go into detail of what happened to me, but I will say monsters are not under the bed. They walk among us.

When I was 19 years old and living with my roommate, we went to a club called OverDrive on a Saturday night. The club was lit, and while I was in line, my friend Demetrius from junior high recognized me and stood with us. We started catching up. I asked him about his friend. “Who is that?” I asked. “Oh, that’s my boy, Rashaud,” he said. “We go way back.” I gave Demetrius my number and told him to keep in touch. The next day Rashaud texted me. We went on a date a couple days later. It was the beginning of a seven-year relationship filled with heartache and abuse. 

My housing situation became tenuous. My friend wasn’t keeping up with her part of the rent. I couldn’t afford a two-bedroom apartment by myself, so I told her I was moving out. I couch-surfed, bouncing from house to house. When I didn’t have a place to sleep, I slept in my car. I couldn’t stay with Rashaud because he lived with his mom. My parents were in a homeless shelter with my younger siblings, so I couldn’t stay with them. I was working full-time and then some, just so I could save up for a place, which is hard without any credit. 

Rashaud and I were only together a few months when I found out I was pregnant on my 20th birthday. (Happy birthday to me.)  I still remember I took two tests that night, and one the next morning, just to make sure. The doctors told me I was three-and-a-half weeks pregnant. I was shocked because I was on birth control. When I told Rashaud, he acted like he was happy. 

I used to get horrible night sickness. As I got bigger it was difficult to sleep in a car or on a couch, so I got a room at Motel 6 when it was payday. One morning at check-out time, I didn’t have all the money for the room. I begged the clerk to give me some more time to get the money. “Sorry, but my hands are tied!” he said. “When you get all of the money for the room, come back.” I went to get all my things together to leave. I was in tears and scared. I didn’t know what I was going to do. This woman stopped me and said she overheard everything. She asked if I was okay. I told her I was fine. 

“How far along are you sweetie?” she asked me. I told her I was a few months and having a baby girl. She insisted on helping because she didn’t want to see a pregnant woman sleeping in a car. I finally gave in and thanked her for helping me. We went back to the front desk and she paid for a couple of weeks. I was in shock. No one has ever done something like that for me. I asked her if I could pay her back but she declined. “Just give people a hand up when you can, okay?” she told me. I will never forget the sweet woman who left an impression on my heart. 

When I was six months pregnant, my parents got a place and asked me to come live with them. I was so happy to have a home again. I was so worried about having somewhere for me and my baby. At my 5D sonogram appointment, I got to see Mia's perfect little face. She had so much hair. But after I had Mia, the abuse started again.

In the beginning, it was verbal. Then Rashaud started pushing me. I should have left then, but I was stupid. Some days were good and some were really bad. Mia was 15 months old when I found out I was pregnant with my second daughter Anicia. I was so scared to tell him. When I showed him the test, he didn’t say a word and just left the house. The next nine months were okay. I wasn’t getting yelled at as much. But after I had Anicia, the beatings started. It got to the point where I was getting beat up almost every day. I was good at hiding everything—or so I thought. 

Six years ago, when Mia was six and Anicia was four, I finally left Rashaud. We were living in our own place at the time. I called my dad to come get us and I never looked back. I finally had had enough. I was able to get back on my feet with help from my parents. I got hired to a better paying job. Things were finally looking up. 

I remembered what the sweet woman said about paying it forward. I help out whenever I can. I’ll go around the neighborhood and ask if the elderly and disabled need anything. I’ll clean their homes, run errands and visit with them. During the holidays, I go to the homeless shelter to find a couple families to help out for Christmas. My family and I cook a huge feast and invite people over who don’t have anywhere to go. This year, we are sewing scarves and blankets for the homeless. We've got a bunch of gloves, too. I love giving others a hand up. Seeing a smile on people’s faces is the best. If we had more people in the world to help others, the world would be a better place. 

Acts of Kindness

I’m a Domestic Violence Survivor—Now I Help Others Survive

My face gets hot and my vision blurs as steam billows outward.

A rush of sensations—thoughts, feelings, memories, ideas, dreams, desires, reassurances—envelop me as I struggle to hold a steady breath.

I didn't realize I was in so deep. I hadn’t anticipated that I’d become an accomplice, an agent of the state and upholder of the systems we so critically analyze and deconstruct in my class. I thought I was helping the youth by holding space in my classroom to critique these systems of control. I thought by offering ways to engage in activism that I was empowering them to cause change. I really believed my science projects were an exercise in co-imagining a future where science and technology can open up new opportunities for community growth and empowerment.

All of it sounded so good on paper. I didn’t know my efforts in the classroom, although of purest intention, would only feed into a malicious cycle, one that robs each person in it of their soul, their essence, no matter their role.

I spent six long years working on my lessons, teaching strategies, projects, community outreach, classroom management and communication skills so that I could be the kind of ideal teacher I’d read about and admired. But no matter how many students enjoyed my class, or how many awards I received for a job well done, I still felt empty. I figured I’d continue working on my craft until I developed a reputation as a great educator, and that like most of my mentors and idols, the satisfaction of a job well done would fuel my passion and make it all worthwhile.

But now I see I was simply asleep—a side effect of working from within a system designed for control.

I didn’t expect waking up would be like this: seeing so clearly, feeling so deeply. But I guess there are no coincidences. It was destined to be that way: Once I finally healed enough from my past traumas, my mind, body and heart would align, and my soul would be filled with the hyper-awareness of all the selves I have scattered across time and space, existing in my memory or someone else’s.

I see myself as a child again, being socialized at school to believe American meritocracy will free me from the grips of poverty, ignorance and misfortune. I’m encouraged to compete for the acknowledgment and validation that what I’m so positive about is real and empirically true. I’m reminded that my tears and anxieties have no place in the classroom because it distracts from the learning. I’m assured that my instinctual shyness towards some adults was a result of my unstable home life, and not my ability to feel the darkness and sadness they hide.

I feel my teen self seeking comfort in the consistency of the classroom setting, and the constant praise I receive for being “one of the good ones”—the pride in being deemed outstanding for valuing knowledge over trivial feelings. I hear the applause for awards I’d won for executing the complex logical acrobatics the hard sciences require. Yet I struggle to fill the pits of my heart, where the pain lies, and occasionally rises when I’m cold-called to answer a question. But this version of me is eager to please and is good at navigating toxic relationships.

I recall the insecurities and overcompensating behaviors during my time existing and studying on a predominantly white undergraduate college campus. I remember buckling under the pressures of a high end, fully-funded science lab that demanded strict adherence to lab protocol—protocol I was learning for the first time, while so many of my peers already knew it by heart.

I see myself engaging in substance abuse and unsafe sexual practices to cope with the feelings of loneliness and inadequacy. I experience again the depression and self-isolation I underwent when I realized schooling wasn’t going to deliver on my post-graduation happily-ever-after fantasy.

Being awake now, I can experience these past versions of myself and see the impact this system has had on my development over time. It gives context to my personal experience and weaves it into a systemic issue. But it doesn’t stop there. I simultaneously become aware of the hundreds of versions that have existed and will continue to exist in the minds of my current and former students.

The teacher who held space for more personal conversations. The teacher with the fun project. The teacher who failed them. The teacher they dreaded to visit because she was too coldly logical and confusing. The kooky teacher with strange ideas about the mind and the universe. The teacher who won’t let them eat in class. The intimidating teacher. The teacher that doesn’t believe in Jesus. The teacher they feel they let down because they didn't graduate. The teacher they stopped talking to because life got too real and they didn’t want her to be disappointed.

There were so many instances where I felt the deeper socio-emotional and spiritual aches my students and I experienced at the hands of this system, but I couldn’t communicate what I was feeling intuitively. I’d been too disconnected from my emotions, for too long. My brain, so good at logic games, would play tricks to convince me that the system could be fixed if I just stayed in it long enough and tried harder. I was sure that if I just gave more of myself in the classroom, all of my students could pass. All of them would graduate, go to college and become successful. I was living proof you could succeed if you play the game right. I regurgitated this dogma to students and parents like incantations, limiting the capabilities of human creativity to that which can be graded with a rubric.

As I articulate my current experience with self, I can expand outside my mind’s desire to analyze and judge my unfortunate participation in this system. This newfound awareness brings into perspective that this system isn’t new. My ancestral trauma primes me to fear and respect the powers that be—not to bite the hand that feeds but to beat them at their own game. And although countless authors, scholars and mentors encouraged my ability to reprogram the system from within, I see now that it was a flawed motive from the start.

Only when community becomes aligned like our individual selves, can true, large-scale, meaningful change come to education. Only when unity and self-love become the standard all measured are by, will the controlling education system be dismantled.

With this new perspective, I now see so much. My students who ignore the lesson but appreciate my work are my allies—they co-create a space with me that values honest and tender communication. Those students who despise school but come to share their lived experiences with me are my new mentors. They show me the power of human connection and its spiritual value. My anxious students who struggle to complete timed performance tasks, but confidently share their smiles and laughter, are the models of genuine expression I never had in a school setting. Even the students who talk back, defy school rules and hurt others in search of their passion showcase the power of the human heart, regardless of its level of maturity or experience.

Aside from the intense personal reflection, my awakening from within the education system has shown me that we are on a path towards radical change—a path that leads to where education isn’t measured by grades assigned to productivity, but rather by the cultivation of healthy relationships. Where the desire to learn isn’t tied to intrinsic curiosity or a belief in meritocracy, but a passion to connect with community, the environment and the cosmos beyond.

Our guides won’t be people on a podium, but rather the youth who choose to defy the system: The ones who ditch class to be outside in nature. The ones who cherish their friendships over sitting quietly for hours. The ones who refuse to follow rules. They carry the seeds of the ancestors, which is why they won’t fall in line. Their existence is resistance against the monopolization of logic for profit.

As a newly awakened educator, it is my duty to speak into existence the fall of this failing education system, so that these seeds may be sown in the compost, and a new vision for holistic education can be dreamed up from outside the classroom walls.

Education

Waking Up: Meritocracy in Education Must Be Dismantled

When I decided, as a social experiment, to stop dating white men, there were several reasons why: I was exhausted from doing too much emotional labor. I was resentful that my white partners weren’t the allies that I wanted. I was fed up feeling tired for the majority of the time we were together. 

At first, I misunderstood the source of our issues and in doing so, misdiagnosed all kinds of problems on my partners. It took halfway through my last relationship with a white man to realize that there was a line between his problems and his social conditioning. It wasn’t until six months after the relationship ended that lines started to become clearer to me. 

I’ve dated mainly white men for most of my life. I’ve yet to unpack whether that’s because of my own social conditioning, my socioeconomic standing, purely personal preference or a matter of location and population density. Whatever the reasons, it came to a point where I needed to self-analyze what I was doing. There was a consistency to my behavioral patterns in these choices that I needed to understand. Why did I keep leaving those relationships feeling so hurt and tired? And why did it feel different when I was seeing another person of color?  

Let’s recognize this: access to language is a sign of privilege. The language that came to me during my last relationship with a white man changed my life. Toward the end, I was able to start vocalizing critical distinctions of what I was experiencing emotionally. Terms like “emotional labor” and “gaslighting” were succinct ways to define the overwhelming feelings I was carrying with me. I used them as shields against the onslaught of my own confusion. Unburdening myself through these words were powerful releases that would come to save me a lot of pain and explaining. 

I feel like “access to language is a sign of privilege” is the type of phrase that should be stamped on a coin. 

Part of the reason for my dating experiment was to draw a line in the sand on how much of my love and labors were divided between social conditioning and myself. This was crucial, and it took time: The process of unlearning takes longer than learning. I needed to give myself a break from the emotional labor of having to generally explain my trauma or defend my racial POV as a woman of color. I wanted to be able to have my intentional choices be accepted, not questioned for reasons that I knew to be racial, and would need to point out as such.

I dated actively for two years, intentionally avoiding white males. Some white men who became aware of my experiment were upset by my choices. They didn’t understand why this might be something I needed to do for myself, even going so far as demanding an explanation. It was great to know that I didn’t owe them one. 

Dating strictly people of color was incredible. Peer acceptance within repression is a beautiful thing to experience. I felt my defenses relax and begin to take up less space. I felt the nonverbal language between my POC partners and me become easier—nonverbal communication is something that I consider to be crucial within relationships. I shared more of my trauma and it was seen with a different perspective, which made me feel more secure. 

I quickly got a better idea of how I needed a partner to step up for me. When I was dating persons of color, they naturally found the moments where I needed support or camaraderie, without me having to explain why to them. Not having to do as much emotional labor—or sometimes not at all—was a relief. The experience of my existence felt validated in a whole new way. 

After a couple of years of dating, my friends and family challenged me to ask myself if the rules I’d put in place were really serving me anymore. And during that time I’d noticed that some of the issues I’d had in relationships were more about gender than race. So I decided to open the playing field back up. 

First of all, most men need to go to therapy and stop expecting their partners to help them work through trauma. Full stop. Moms and/or dads, please teach your boys to have healthy emotional boundaries. Women in hetero relationships are not here to be the carriers of their partner’s emotional burdens. Women—especially women of color—are already coming into the relationship marginalized on a social level, and we don’t need to be unnecessarily encumbered by our partners’ emotional immaturity. Men need to be responsible and mature about the work that they need to be doing for themselves and their partners. 

But the most important lesson I learned during my experiment was to ask anyone I’m dating to do the work that’s necessary for them to be a proper ally to people of color. Looking back, I realized I’d never learned how to ask for allyship. I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know how to differentiate those particular needs from the other ones I had. POC aren’t taught to ask for allyship, and white people aren’t taught to provide it. When I wasn’t dating white people, I found that support readily available. Interracial dating will always require more emotional labor from the person of color, no matter what, and those commitments have to be set up right away. Communicate those needs first, especially if you are in a relationship with a white person. 

It’s been such a relief to be able to define what allyship means to me when I enter into a relationship and to know that no matter what–even if the romance dies out–I’ll still have this person as an ally. Let your white partner know that the responsibility of protecting and dismantling systemic racism is on them, and do not choose to move further with that individual unless they can genuinely agree to be there for you in that way. If not, you’ll be entering a space that you may find all too familiar, including feelings of burnout, resentment and overbearing emotional labor. 

White partners need to recognize that by entering a relationship with a person of color, they’ll need to not only be there romantically, but also to provide allyship, or the relationship will become much more challenging, taxing and unpleasant for their partner.

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I Didn't Understand Allyship Until I Stopped Dating White Men

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I once had a therapist tell me that sex is a point of contention in a lot of relationships. One person wants more sex, one person wants less. It causes friction. 

I came out as asexual when I was 22 years old. I was married at the time, and while it wasn’t the only reason we split up, it was a major contributing factor. After I came out, my spouse told me that they weren’t sure if they could be in love with me if we weren’t having sex. “This isn’t what I signed up for when we got married,” they told me. I tried really hard to be accommodating of their needs and, desperate to keep our relationship going, I would sleep with them even though I didn’t want to. This was traumatic for me.

It’s really important to make three things clear. 

The first is that asexuality is a legitimate thing, just like any other sexual orientation. There just isn’t as much attention given to it, and it’s my firm belief that there are a lot more of us out there than many think. Because people are somewhat inherently self-focused, it’s difficult for a sexual person to understand the concept of someone not wanting to have sex. We also live in a hyper-sexualized society; this isn’t new information, and I don’t think I really need to spend an exorbitant amount of time explaining what I mean. But popular media portrays the lack of interest in sex as childish and temporary. 

The second is that asexuality is a spectrum. There are some asexual people who simply experience sexual attraction rarely. There are some who can only experience sexual attraction if they have a deep emotional connection with the other person. Your place on the spectrum does not invalidate your asexuality. 

The third is that no matter what your sexual orientation is, expecting anyone to have sex when they don’t want to is messed up. Period. 

People tend to equate being asexual to having zero interest in romantic relationships. And while there are some strictly platonic beings, a lot of asexual people still want to be in romantic relationships like anyone else. For sexual people, sex is generally an intense source of intimacy. So much so that other sources don’t appear as significant in comparison. But those other sources of intimacy are what I live for. Making dinner together, taking walks, holding hands, kissing—these are the things that make me feel romantically connected with someone. 

This isn’t to say that sexual people don’t experience intimacy from these things. It’s just that asexual people only have these forms of expression. When my ex-partner told me they didn’t know if they could be in love with me if we weren’t having sex, it cut deep. It felt like all of those little things that made me feel close to them meant nothing. And while that’s probably somewhat of an embellishment created by hurt feelings, one thing was clear: Sex mattered a lot more.

After my marriage ended, I started seeing a girl with whom I’d attended high school. I had made a post on Instagram when I came out and, one day, when we were hanging out at a bar, she wanted to be sure. “Are you really?” she asked, with an overly concerned look on her face, waiting for me to answer. I explained what my asexuality looked like, and though I could tell that she didn’t totally get it, she told me it didn’t bother her. I truly believed that but we ran into a lot of the same issues that I did when I was married. When I said no, her disappointment was palpable. When I said no, she would try to change my mind. 

Part of the issue was that I was still timid about my own sexuality. I operated as if I wasn’t asexual most of the time, and I was faced with the expectations that are put on a sexual person. I don’t think she could completely wrap her head around the idea that I hated sex, though she said she was OK with it.

I think that this cognitive dissonance is a big part of why it’s so hard to date sexual people as a non-sexual person. It’s 2021, and a majority of people acknowledge and respect different sexualities. But since there’s such a fundamental difference between asexuality and other sexual orientations, it tends to be acknowledged consciously but invalidated on a subconscious level. 

I’ve only been out for a few years, but I’ve always known that something about me was a little different. And ever since sex was on the table as a possibility—out or not—I’ve been expected to have sex when I don’t want to time and time again. As I navigate the dating world, I realize more and more that I have to be more willing to advocate for myself in those situations. But I think that if other people tried to understand asexuality better, it would be a little easier.

I'm Asexual: This Is Why It’s So Difficult to Date

In the midst of the recent uptick in anti-Asian activity and otherwise harmful rhetoric as a result of COVID-19, I feel compelled to address yet another complicated layer to this unfortunate trend: gendered anti-Asian racism. Think you don’t know what that is? I bet you do. It’s Asian fetishism. 

For Asian women, dating apps are equally the most welcoming and the most oppressive spaces for us to exist. We get a lot of attention, but most of it is unwanted because it’s racially driven. Statistics have long shown that Asian women are highly favored in online dating, whereas Asian men fare much worse. I used to think I caught a lucky break being born as a woman versus a man, but I don’t anymore. Asian women and men face the same system of oppression but on opposite sides of the coin. For me, it's objectification; for men, it's de-objectification. For both of us, it’s stereotypes based on race. It’s an extremely complicated feeling knowing you are desired for something you’re born into, and for this attribute you’re also a magnet for hate. There is, indeed, a fine line between love and hate.

Most people of color (POC) date knowing our race is a plus, minus or, at best, a consideration for any potential partner. White is the default in America. We are not that. Everyone has preferences that range from superficial to Socratic, but we have to acknowledge the tectonic shift that occurs when a preference turns into fetishization. Asian fetishization is often driven by expectations of deferential behavior, meek personalities and delicate physicalities—all stereotypes deeply rooted in imperialism, misogyny and other problematic systems. We need to stop accepting Asian fetishization as a type or preference and call it what it is: gendered, anti-Asian racism.

Despite my awareness of this dynamic and all the ways in which it hurts me, I’m also painfully aware that racism lives within me. When I was hit with the realization that I operate under the same white supremacist and misogynist views as my nemesis (the White Man), it was devastating. We live in a society that centers on the white male experience, so it’s excruciatingly difficult to break free from that and find a new position—one that actually serves you, if you’re a woman or POC. 

In my late 20s, after a lot of therapy, it occurred to me that I exclusively dated blond-haired, blue-eyed, conventionally attractive white men because that’s who I wanted to be. And since my Asian hair and Asian eyes and overall Asian face betrayed me, I did the next best thing—I dated it. 

White supremacy has taught us all to revere whiteness and find close proximity to it in order to belong. We are trained to erase our own othering identities and strive to be as white-relatable as possible. For most of my life, I wouldn’t date Asian men and found ways to be as white as possible. That, my friends, is internalized racism. It’s crushing to come to terms with it. But do you know what’s more crushing? Realizing you live in a world that makes it impossible for you to escape racism, even if you manage to dispel as much of the internalized stuff as possible. 

I bet you know an Asian woman partnered with a white man. I’d also bet that Asian woman is attractive. White men decided that white men are the Übermensch, so once you cross a threshold of attractiveness, you gain access to the coveted white man. I bought into this for most of my life. I used to pride myself on seducing jocks who were typically interested in pretty blondes. I would joke I was a gateway drug or that I was colonizing the colonizer. On some level, I knew I was being oppressed and I wanted to flip the power.

Eventually, it became clear the joking had to stop. I realized I was in a really hurtful situation, and that my desire to play with this power dynamic was only perpetuating a putrid and toxic ideology. I had to stop feeding into this narrative and start actively working against it. And since it was too enormous to change on my own, the most I could do was call it out, name it, speak truth to power.

I can vividly recall the moment I realized the enormity of the problem. I had gone on a series of dates with white men and discovered they all had Asian fetishes by the end of our first dates. 

As a lifelong target of this particular type of racism, I can feel it in my gut when I am in its presence. But also, I’ve learned by now to just ask. I confront all men I suspect to be fetishizers with the question: “Do you have a preference for dating Asian women?” The answer, 100 percent of the time, takes some form of: “I like women with dark hair and almond-shaped eyes,” or, “I like that Asian women have smooth and hairless skin,” or, “You have a really strong work ethic,” or, “You age well.” I realize how unbelievable this sounds, but it is the horrid reality I live in. Naturally, I never react well to these answers, but when I point to the absurd racism of these convictions, I am either met with outrageous justifications or worse, defensive anger.

After the fourth eerily similar experience in a row, I fell into a dark hole of confusion and despair. To be clear, this was probably my 40th experience like this throughout my life, but to experience so many in such rapid succession with men I thought I was purposefully selecting was deeply defeating.

I made the intellectual decision to stop dating white men, simply because I know how hard it will be to find a white man who understands the systems that work against me well enough to relate to me in any real way. It’s not the fetishization, per se, but a basic lack of understanding of oppressive systems and racial inequity that creates a gap I’m not willing to bridge. 

But here’s what’s messed up. You’ve probably noticed that I’ve only mentioned dating white men. That’s because I have historically been more attracted to white men. I’ve come a long way from only dating Tim Riggins, but I still have a strong attraction to white men that I can’t shake. And I can’t decide if I need to shake it. I realize I am a product of my society, but I know too much to just accept the way things are. Essentially, I’m stuck in a literal no man’s land where my body wants a white man but my brain doesn’t. 

I guess the only place to go from here is a lonely and decrepit life with my dog. But the fact remains that I am wholly uninterested in dating someone who commodifies my race, and therefore my existence.

More Than a Type: When Fetishization Becomes Racism

As a young girl, I would spend ages in sajdah (prostration) on the prayer mat, crying and asking Allah why I felt so different from the world around me. To a young, preteen me, it didn’t make sense that everyone around me was wrong. So, in the black-and-white way that I thought, that only meant that I was the one who was wrong. That it was my thoughts that didn’t make sense to anyone else and that I had to fix them. But trying to analyze my own thoughts would lead me down a rabbit hole of overthinking and feeling even worse about myself. 

I’ve struggled with anxiety and overthinking for years, but it’s only recently that I’ve come to realize that because for so long I never had a name for it. My own lack of understanding also meant that I didn’t know how to explain my feelings to anyone around me, even if I so badly wanted someone to share in my struggle. But one thing I had always been taught growing up as a Muslim was that you’re never alone, because even when everyone in the world leaves, you always have Allah to turn to. And so that’s what I did.

I won’t pretend I’m the best Muslim or the most consistent at praying, but I do feel a strong sense of connection to God and Islam, and I really do love my religion. I would pray constantly to God to help me make sense of how I was feeling. I also became more receptive to conversations around me at dinner parties and gatherings that would often discuss how mental health issues were more prevalent in the “West” because they were removed from religion, and how, as Muslims, our faith was strong enough to overcome that. Although prayers made me feel good about doing the right thing as a Muslim, I didn’t feel that meditative peace that I was told I was meant to feel, and that scared me. 

I grew up amidst a general belief that mental illnesses were taboo to talk about—that they were just a general sign of being weak of faith. After all, how could Muslims struggle with mental health when they had God to turn to, when they subscribed to the belief that everything happened for a reason? So, even when I had no words to describe what I was feeling, I recognized how people around me felt and knew that I couldn’t talk about it. With no one to turn to, I began to put too much pressure on my prayers to fix it, not realizing that the very idea of a “quick fix” to mental health was far more damaging than it was helpful. 

When things refused to get better, my staunch beliefs didn’t allow me to blame my prayers, so I blamed myself. Clearly, I was a bad Muslim for not being able to find relief through my religion, and it created a very confusing and yet highly dependent relationship between me and my religious acts. I would force myself to try and act more religious and then feel worse about myself. This was often interspersed with periods of feeling completely removed from my prayers and any other religious practice. Even when I did carry them out, I felt like I was just going through the motions. I just couldn’t figure out how to get it right. 

Things have changed a lot since those early years when I struggled to put my feelings into words. Therapy and research, and no longer running away from my own thoughts, have allowed me to understand what I’ve been feeling for so long and to find out what I need to get better. It’s not prayer. But that doesn’t mean I don’t pray anymore. In fact, I still feel quite guilty when I don’t and I’m actively trying to feel more connected to my faith.

But finally coming out from the pressure of only feeling like a good Muslim at the behest of my mental health has made things infinitely better. I know I’m not the only one who has felt alienated because of community perceptions around mental health, and while it’s easier to talk to my parents about my struggles now, most people outside my family would still tell me to pray if I told them I wasn’t feeling too great. I know that prayers do work for some people, but I can speak from experience when I say that pushing them as a universal solution does more harm than good. 

After years of feeling shunned and alone, my immediate reaction to conversations about mental health in public is to assume that someone will judge me for being a bad Muslim. As far as I have come, there are still times when a random comment will push me into a spiral of self-doubt once again. The one thing I wish all of us could understand is that, for someone who lives in a world of self-doubt, relationships with faith and spirituality are more fragile than most. In my world, identities are so greatly shaped by those relationships, and fixing the damage caused to them can take a lifetime. 

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Mental Health

My Mental Health Struggles Made Me Feel Like A Bad Muslim

By no means am I an avid drug user. For most of my time as a student, my relationship with drugs has been like one with good friends—the occasional hook-up is OK, but never commit to a long-term relationship. Other than the occasional joint here and there, my drug life was quite honestly more than a little dull. I had a muted interest in cocaine, MDMA and ketamine. That was until my curiosity surrounding psychedelics grew, and my partner (having had a rather life-changing LSD experience of his own) encouraged me to try LSD. Little did I know that this experience would help me to come to terms with my own womanhood and set me on my path to understanding female empowerment.

The whole “female empowerment” trope had never resonated particularly strongly with me before. I would call myself a feminist by definition, but my emotional investment in the subject was limited, to say the least. While I could see the issues of gender and misogyny in societal life, my own relationship with femininity and womanhood was not something I’d spent much mental energy on. I’d never felt particularly feminine, nor had I felt like I could celebrate my “woman-ness.” In the past, I’d even had experiences questioning how much I felt like “a woman,” unable to really connect with that part of me. I had in no way intended for this to be the purpose of my trip, and it hadn’t really been something to dwell much on. Rather, I’d set out on this trip with an open mind and relatively low expectations for any last impact on my life. But how wrong I was.

As many other users of psychedelics will tell you, LSD has the capacity to completely alter your self-perception. Many report it giving them a “bird’s eye view” of themselves and their lives, and for many, it can be very helpful in overcoming issues of self-confidence and self-esteem. Although not the case for everybody, one thing people suggest is to not look in the mirror. The visual distortions that occur during a trip can be hugely unsettling when seen on yourself. Some people have even said they’ve seen themselves as older or visually repulsive. 

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My Trans Journey With Gender-Affirming Care

I Was Adopted: My Parents and the Significance of Selflessness

I Discovered the Family I Never Knew I Had

I’m a Domestic Violence Survivor—Now I Help Others Survive

Waking Up: Meritocracy in Education Must Be Dismantled

I Didn't Understand Allyship Until I Stopped Dating White Men

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I'm Asexual: This Is Why It’s So Difficult to Date

More Than a Type: When Fetishization Becomes Racism

My Mental Health Struggles Made Me Feel Like A Bad Muslim

How Tripping on Acid Helped Me Embrace My Femininity

My Husband Was Having a Nervous Breakdown; I Never Noticed Until He Went to Jail

COVID-19 Lockdown Gave London Clear Skies and Clean Air

I Grew Up on a Family Farm, and Now I Have One of My Own

The NBA Is More Liberal Than Hollywood

It's Not Just You: Tech Is Systematically Excluding Beginners

A Poor Indian Man Taught Me True Generosity

When Doctors and Lawmakers Failed Us, My Family Had to End My Father's Life

I’m a Firefighter in Australia and Climate Change Is Killing Us

Become a Love Extremist and Choose Love in Troubled Times

I Had My First-Ever Breakup During the Coronavirus Pandemic

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