Yearly Archives: 2020

I eat to stay here, in these moments that are fleeting, and conversely, to survive these moments that appear staid and unshaking.

I was a bad mother. A bad person - no, a horrible person. I was undeserving, unworthy, ungrateful, unloving.

My personal record was a whole week without eating or sleeping. Because why stop at starving? Let’s add a side of delirium, too.

My body was always a thing I had to deal with because, well, it was where I lived every day.

To those who are white, if you were never told the full story of America’s institutionalized racism and systematic oppression, that is not your fault, but it is also not an excuse. We must do better than those who came before us.

When I first started to restrict my food intake, I felt powerful. I made lists of the foods that I would eat on a specific day well in advance.

The All Lives Matter movement is talking about equality that does not exist yet. The Black Lives Matter movement is fighting for the end of systematic oppression and racism in this country.

But it wasn’t just your daughter you didn’t want me to see. When your daughter married and then had babies, you wanted me kept away from them as well.

As I navigated graduate school I gained weight and my thighs expanded, stretch marks rippling across them. The idea of looking at my own body naked was becoming more and more nauseating.

When I was in third grade, I found some pot in one of my mother’s drawers. I had been fully indoctrinated into the belief that marijuana was a gateway drug that led directly to heroin. Naturally, I was hysterical.

So, coming from this place of fear, I never thought I’d say this, at least say it out loud, but I’ve never wanted to go to a funeral more in my life than I do right now.

But wait...My son hates you the most...He's growing up...Knowing pain...Seeing pain...Daily...On the face of his mother