I started writing this when I was elevated and even though it may sound exaggerated and heavily personified, I know that I was writing what I truly feel. This is how music is present in my life.

Music allows me to stand up to, address, and understand my emotions. Without you I wouldn’t know who I am. I am a person whose emotions feel complicated and out of the ordinary. My feelings make themselves more important than anything. Without you I would be dead. I would have nothing to comfort me besides the rain. Some of my friends do too, but the rain and you are not human and the closest thing to my inner peace. I’m alive because of you and I owe you my talent, truth, and full self. You have given me the greatest feeling I will ever feel. Nostalgia and therapy. You give me the greatest feeling and remind me every time I play you. You are the only thing that truly understands me because with you I am able to be my authentic self. You allow me to feel everything under the sky, and question. You are the only good feeling that multiplies in so many different ways that only deepens my feeling and understanding. I love you. You are my heart and passion. The people that I share you with are special. The people that I share myself with through you are special. The person that I will truly be with in the most loving and honest way will have you to thank for my heart. I may not even understand the magnitude of this and what it really means but I will try my best to give you my all and give you truly me. I deserve that because I owe myself love that is true. You understand me in a different language that I don’t even speak. I don’t understand. You are the only one that I feel comfortable with giving my complete self too. Not that I am afraid someone will but you wouldn’t betray me. You give my security. You give my thoughts and emotions shelter, food, and water. There’s more that I can say, but for now, Thank you. I look forward spending the rest of our lives together.

Of course when it comes to sexuality, a lot of people judge the book by its cover. Because I dress masculine according to society, a lot of people will already assume that I am lesbian or like women. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE WOMEN! That’s not the point though. My idea of my sexuality is way more complicated than the simple thoughts and identities that are put on me based on the way that I look. It’s no one’s business how complicated it is for me but it’s almost insulting how casual people can be with simplifying things like this.

100% of my sexuality is invisible, but what is also invisible with my sexuality, is the struggle of not feeling like I understand my sexuality. I know what I like, but do I know exactly what I like or don’t like? Is it even necessary to think about it in this way? I don’t know, but that’s the way I’m thinking. The unknown is unsatisfying and in this case in particular, a little uncomfortable. It’s like an itch that won’t go away. Maybe being a virgin has a lot to do with it. I know that I’m going to love women as I do now but maybe me not having deeply touched and/or been deeply touched by a woman or anybody has allowed more space for these uncertainties, thoughts, and ignorance to exist. So does this go away with experience? For some, they honestly don’t need it, but maybe I do. Thinking about this is pretty wild because that fact right there is a little unsettling. There are so many people forcing that idea onto queer people, that you have to fuck a certain gender to know that you don’t want to be with that gender. Trying to internally accept that I may need that experience with different people, different genders, makes me feel like a trader to the cause (of just knowing being enough). I know that it’s not a bad thing and that it’s okay, but damn…..

Here’s a small look into my head and what I be thinking sometimes. “Damn she fine, I want all of that.” “That boy cute, but I wouldn’t want to fuck cause I don’t like dick. At least I really don’t think I do, but it might feel really good though based on just pure sensory pleasure.” “Maybe you’re just afraid of penetration.” “Naw, I don’t think I could ever let a man be on top of me.” “All the people you have ever really liked have been girls. “You only really think about marrying, maybe having kids, and growing together with a woman.” “You was consistently making out with the same girl in daycare yo, and even though you was young I don’t think it was just on some playful shit.” “You feel like you’re falling in love with this beautiful and incredibly cool girl, and you have never felt that way about a boy.  I don’t think that you ever will and that’s perfectly fine with me.”  

So it’s like…um…..yeah I don’t know. I love women and maybe just women. Maybe not.

I cannot wait until I get to the point where I am not thinking about my body so much. I frequently enough think about how it looks in clothing, without clothing, around other people, how it fits in spaces, and even how it moves.

I love fashion and streetwear, and you know nowadays you can’t be on social media without seeing all the different styles and outfits people be rocking. I’m trying to get like that so bad. Not to be like other people, but to be able to wear the clothes that I think are tuff and to authentically express myself in the clothes and styling of my choosing. It really sucks that my options are very limited as not only a plus-size person but a plus-size female who wears and wants to rock men’s clothing. I can’t count on my hands the number of times I’ve seen some tuff clothes that I want and have the money to buy, but they didn’t sell it in my size. I just don’t have enough fingers. This dilemma has been one of the highlights of my life. I’m left with the options of either loosing weight, waiting on the clothing industry to up the sizes, or make my own clothes tailored to me. I want to lose weight regardless, but I shouldn’t have to to wear the clothes I want. They should be more accommodating of differently sized bodies.

When it comes to thinking about my body, sometimes it’s a question of am I just overthinking. In some cases, maybe, but in others, I am forced to. Like when going out to a restaurant with people and we are sitting in a booth, it’s how much additional space am I taking up compared to the others. Can we all fit? Sometimes there has to be an arrangement of smaller bodies sitting with bigger bodies for it to work. When choosing where to sit in the commons, it can never be those silver metal chairs because they are too constricting, and my ass and thighs won’t fit. When I’m going somewhere with my friends in a car and 3 people have to be in the back, I’m probably going to have to sit up front so there is more space available in the back. I guess these things can’t be helped because that’s just the way body and space work, but it sucks. If there is one thing on this campus that I really really strongly and heavily dislike, is a hill/incline. Not only do I be tired as shit going up them hills trying to catch my breath, but the part of walking on a hill that is supposed to be less taxing, even requires some work sometimes. When I’m walking up a hill, one thing that keeps me going is the fact that it won’t be as hard walking down. Those hills with the steep inclines/declines can really kick rocks. If any of y’all live on campus and know that hill that starts in lot 8 by the library and goes all the way up to the apartment community center, y’all can visualize what I’m talking about. I don’t know about y’all body, but when I’m going down that hill, my body is having a full-on fight with gravity. I really have to try to control my body on trying to pace the hill and not go down too fast. This is one of the times I feel the most disconnected from my body because gravity, momentum, and the decline have more influence over my body than my mind does.

You see the way my life is setup right now, really, this past year and some change, it has been a sinking ship that I’ve been trying to patch up with tape. And I’m not talking about that Flex Tape they be trying to sell us on those infomercials, if you know what I’m talking about. That actually would have probably worked.

I suck at getting help. Getting help is hard. The thought of how much better I could feel and how much more successful I could be while getting the help that I need, torments the force that is stopping me from getting help in the first place. My head is so jumbled that even sitting here trying to write about this is a struggle. My thoughts are usually all over the place and in no place at the same time. It feels like there’s this mental block stopping me from getting through the simplest shit like putting my classes in my google calendar. I easily get overwhelmed with things like making doctor appointments even though I can feel parts of my body needing to be assessed.

Everything really started with the pandemic. Spring 2020 I remember sitting in Erickson Hall in the common room of my suite with my roommates getting the news. The news about covid-19 reaching the U.S. and how after Spring break we would be staying home. What I felt in that moment was one of my worst fears coming a reality. I guess it would be okay though since this all was going to blow over after a couple of weeks, but as you all know, our stay home was much longer than expected and covid-19 was much more of threat than we initially thought.

Since then, things have been going downhill. I was living in fear and having chronic anxiety. Nowhere was safe, even in my dreams. The people close to me know my fears, one of them being my mom who frequently enough brought up my fear because it was something she believed in. Even when my thoughts (rarely) would slightly calm down, boom! I was triggered and It felt like I couldn’t escape it. This would intensify my fear and anxiety to the point where I didn’t want to be here anymore. On top of all this, online school was horrible for me. I was constantly interrupted by my thoughts, stopped participating, had lost motivation in going to class, in doing schoolwork, and overall lost a lot of functioning as a college student. I had changed. Before all of this I had been really improving my GPA after my fuck ups from Freshman year, but that took a quick turn. Fall 2020 I took a W on my transcript, got my first D, and started fucking up with my job. Spring 2021 I took another W, got my first F, and continued to fuck up with my job. This summer I got kicked out of my scholars’ program and lost a big scholarship because I didn’t take enough credits over the past two semesters (those W’s got me). After not having to take out loans for being an RA last year, now I have to again even though I’m still an RA. This semester I am already struggling. It has been an endless cycle of wanting to do better, needing help, not getting help, and doing worse. I am so much more than this.

Throughout this whole time, I have been self-aware enough to know that I need help, a lot of it. Truth be told, my problems even go way beyond school. I know that I need help, but many of the things I need help with are the same things that are making it really hard for me to get help. When I try to explain this to my friends, professors, and to all the people I have disappointed, it is easy for them to see excuse after excuse. This is my experience. It is hard to understand and feel what I feel coming from a different point of view. To be honest, some of it is laziness, but a lot of it is also a reality of being stuck and silently yearning out for help. Flex tape would have been a better alternative.