Seems like all my clothes fit too tightly on my body. The band of my bra and my skirt seem to cut into me. I’m restricted, I’m trapped, there’s TOO MUCH of me. Each breath, each moment is overstimulating. I started feeling this way once I decided to call my…

Does your shame keep you company in the dark? Does your shame name and blame? Does your shame flay you alive? Eat you up? Does it run its fingers through your hair and tighten its grip? Can it teach you? Can it learn from you? Can it love you? What does your shame say? My shame tells me I can do better. My shame is sometimes a reflection of my inner truth. My shame tells me I can receive better — I don’t have to tolerate this.

I wake up to my fiance’s alarm. 9:30 AM. We’re night owls and late risers. But lately it’s been harder and harder to wake up with him. The past week I have stayed in bed until my racing mind wakes me. That’s how I wake up these days. To a…

why does it feel like I so want him to admit he is not a good man? Do I believe a good man is only good when he is perfect? No. But I feel a special type of rage remembering the times he claims to be progressive and an ally and not like other men as he shows frustration doing the dishes that I have spent the week doing and remembering to have grace for him.

Letting go of the anger at my have-nots feels like free falling. Free falling has never been encouraged for me, you see, because it’s reckless. And there is no room to be reckless when you have no one to rely on but yourself. How alone my mother must have felt. How alone my father must feel. It’s an ironic tragedy to be around people who lament your absence and whom you feel so alone with. I don’t want to perpetuate the loneliness out of punishment or fear anymore.

Leg M i r r o r s the rot I feel in my mother’s soul. Some days the rot and the soul are one and the same. Other days the rot is the thing that changed my mother- that robbed the both of us. Nothing in nature goes untouched. Perhaps that’s the law I so desire to buck. I wish to be untouched by my rot, by my mom’s rot, by my friends’ rot. Maybe that is why I am so drawn to my partner. His pain motivates him and I do not see that as rot.

As I sit here, eyes swollen and fingers itching to purchase whatever looks good and is at my disposal, I tell myself to take a beat and breathe. Hold that thought — my dog needs to piss. — I just came back from shivering in the cold while my dog…

Dad picks at my scabs. I thought I learned that tendency from my cousin. She was always picking at her scabs and I never understood it until I tried and realized how compelling it is to pick myself open. You get rebirth and redemption and righteous punishment. …

I am always surprised by the level of anger I feel when male or white drivers cut me off or deliver some other form of road fuckery. The sheer amount of anger doesn’t seem to match the situation. Sure, some white guy tries to edge into my lane in his…