Healing is Productive

I hate being sick. I’m not talking about, like, flu sick (though that is awful and I hate that, too, but that is different from what I am talking about). I hate being chronically ill, the kind of sickness where there is no end in sight, just good and bad days. More than I hate being sick, though, I hate being sick in a society that has taught me that: 1) I must always be productive; and 2) productivity has a very narrow definition that does not include prioritizing or taking care of yourself.

So today, as I was laying in bed, writhing in pain as I tried to find a comfortable position to try to fall asleep while my head was throbbing, my eyes ached, and the contents of my stomach threatened to come up, I decided I was going to make today “count.” I thought about all the things I was supposed to do today, all the things I could be doing instead of laying in bed, “doing nothing,” and I forced myself to run a (quick) errand outside, as well as to clean my kitchen. 

Forcing myself to do these two things had some consequences: 1) the sun from being outside (even if for less than 10 minutes) sent my head back into a pounding, throbbing, sore catastrophe; 2) I re-injured my wrist (an old injury I never got checked out...whoops) while scrubbing the stove, and; 3) I ended up back in bed, with pain literally tingling from my head to my fingertips and toes, for hours before being able to get up again. 

And, somewhere during this series of unfortunate events, I thought back on a post I wrote in undergrad about what it means to be productive, and how that very narrow definition of productivity needs to be expanded to make room for self care (you can read that post here). And I wish I had remembered that before I forced myself to do things I was not capable of doing in the name of being “productive.” 

In all honesty, “productivity” is such bullshit. The ableism that underlies the notion that each and every human being must, in some way, “contribute” to society in a visible and/or palpable way is so strong and so hidden, it’s really dangerous. It leads us (both chronically ill and not chronically ill people) to overwork ourselves and not prioritize our own health/well-being. 

It’s also a fallacy that, when you’re laying in bed, sick as a dog and not answering emails and/or going to work and/or cleaning, you’re “doing nothing.” When I had jaw surgery almost two years ago, I spent 30 days with my mouth wired shut. In those 30 days, I could count on two hands the number of times I “did something” and/or left my apartment. That recovery process drained me, though - I am talking, I was sleeping easily 12-16 hours a day for the first three weeks and was still so exhausted. I didn’t understand how I could be so tired when I was doing so little. 

It was during that time that I realized how much work it takes to heal. Your mind and body work so hard to heal themselves from whatever is going on - recovery from a surgery, the flu, whatever it is. That shit takes work. And it’s all invisible work and we don’t see the immediate results of that; it’s not like that feeling when you’re out all day and it’s really hot and sunny and you’re super dehydrated and you get home and down an entire bottle of water and then your body almost immediately feels this, like, flood of relief, and you’re more alert and your throat doesn’t feel so dry anymore and you can think more clearly. 

This kind of healing is different; it is gradual and internal and not so visible to the naked eye. It requires that we trust ourselves and our bodies and minds to know what’s best for them (a really hard thing to do when you’re disabled/chronically ill, but an important thing to work on), and it also requires that we fight back against societal notions of what it means to be “productive.” We have to be okay with not seeing the results of our healing immediately. In a culture of instant gratification, that can be really, really, hard, but it’s so important for us to recognize how hard our bodies and minds are working to get us back to where we need to be.

This gets harder when you’re chronically ill/disabled, because healing in that instance doesn’t have the same meaning as healing when it’s just the flu or even a surgery recovery. There is, in theory, a “light at the end of the tunnel” in those latter instances. You can say, I’ll be out of commission for the next few days/weeks, but I’ll be back at full swing soon thereafter. When you’re chronically ill, that doesn’t happen. Lots of times, you don’t get to know if/when you’ll ever be “back at full swing,” which makes giving yourself time and space to heal that much harder. You live with this mentality of, Well, I’m never gonna be at full speed, so I’m just gonna power through this because it’s not as bad as it could be. The line between “well enough to function,” and “need to dedicate time and space to heal,” is really, really blurred and often quite dynamic. But it’s also important that we work to figure that out, because we deserve all the time and space we need to heal in whatever ways we can. Just because we may need more time/space than our non-chronically ill/disabled peers, doesn’t mean our need and desire to heal is any less valid. 

So yeah, healing is productive, and hard. And I wish I had been more productive today in that sense than in the sense of feeling like I have to actively “do things” in order to make my time “count.” But here I am, at the end of a draining, migraine-filled day, writing a blog post in my very dark room, wondering why my laptop screen won’t get any dimmer, and I am making it my goal to work on healing. Writing this post (which has taken so long bc of frequent breaks bc screens are hard for migraines) is part of that healing for me, as I am able to put into words all my feelings of frustration and anger that I have felt today.

Thank you for reading (whether you have read this whole thing or just parts). To all my chronically ill/disabled friends: I wish you less pain, and I wish you more comfort and/or healing. 

Love,

Ada 

On Being Young and In Pain

Can we just talk about how bodily pain is always attributed to old people, and young people are thought to never be in pain?

The other morning, I hopped on the subway at 6:30am, looking for a seat so I wouldn’t risk having to stand for the 40-minute ride into the city (which has happened before, and which triggers near-unbearable pain throughout my body for the rest of the day). There was a seat available on a 4-seat bench on which three people were sitting, taking up more space than they needed to be taking up. So, I went up and asked them to move over. They wouldn’t, so I sat myself down, at which point one of the women (in her 30s or 40s) sitting down got up and made some remark about how rude I was and whatnot. Then, an older lady sitting on the other side of me told me that, “You can stand, you’re young, she is not, she needs to sit, and you should give her that seat because you can stand and she cannot.” I stated that there was a seat perfectly available if she wanted it, and then eventually, a man who was sitting directly across from me said that there were four seats, and that I had a right to sit down if there were only three people sitting down, and that was the end of the conversation (let’s not talk about the fact that it took a man saying the same thing I had said to end the conversation). 

This is a thing I’ve been thinking about a whole lot for the past few months or so, because I do the same thing that irked me when this older woman did it - I correlate pain to older bodies, even though I, at 24, am constantly in pain. And it really bothers me. Like, people do not believe that I can possibly be in as much pain as I am in because we have this idea that all young bodies do not feel pain or are strong enough to withstand it for things like an hour-long commute on public transportation.

The fact is, that simply isn’t true, and it leads to people saying and believing things like what that woman said to me on the subway a few days ago. When I ask for or demand that my body’s pain be accommodated and/or addressed, people scoff at me because they can’t believe that a body as young as mine can possibly experience the kind of pain we usually associate with older bodies. We believe that we know what a degenerating body looks like, and that if we cannot see the pain, it must not be there.

I need to, for starters, stop calling my body old every time I creak when I get up or feel pain or suddenly become weak. My body is not old and, even if I say it in jest, insinuating that my body needs to be old in order to feel the kinds of pain I feel is to undermine my own pain, my own disabilities, the ones I fight so hard to be recognized. On top of all that, we, as a society, need to recognize that invisible disabilities exist, and stop making the assumption that we know which bodies feel pain based on things we can (and cannot) see.

Really, I’m just tired of my pain constantly being dismissed because, “You’re so young!,” as if that’s a valid reason for me to not be able to feel the kinds of pain I feel, as if it is impossible for me to feel what I feel, as if what I feel could not be real. I’m sick of it. I’m young, and yes, I’m in pain, and it’s a thing that happens, to people younger even than me, and you all need to deal  with it. 

Practicing Self-Care on a Broken Body: For Days When It Feels Too Hard

In undergrad, I learned a lot about self-care. I had an amazing and very dedicated professor/mentor/friend who (at times, quite firmly, and in conjunction with a few others) taught me how to care for myself, my mental and physical health, and my needs. I learned to accept and love my body as it is, and to prioritize my and my body’s needs before the needs of others. That was all fine and well - I was already in a place where I loved my (fat, queer, brown, curly-haired) body, so I was kind of halfway there already (though you don’t have to love your body in order to engage in serious self-care). Now, I just needed to communicate my needs more efficiently, listen to what my body was telling me I needed, and act accordingly. But now, I am angry. I am angry because I am sick. I am angry because, for the past three weeks, I have fluctuated from miserably ill to feeling okay but still a little congested to coughing til my throat is raw. I am angry because all this fluctuating and all this illness has made me miss out on class, on student teaching, on socializing, and more. I am angry because my body will not cooperate. You see, my body has never really been “cooperative.” From the time I was a little girl, I willed it to be different: to be skinny, to have less hair, to stop developing stretch marks, to be taller, to be anything but what it was. My body, though, much like my spirit, is incredibly stubborn, and it stayed fat, and it stayed hairy, and my stretchmarks haven’t gone anywhere, and I’m still not quite 5′3″. And I learned to accept all that jazz, and I love my body as it stands in that sense. But then, when I was 18 years old, I got my first kidney stone. Before that, I’d had my fair share of health problems: high blood pressure, PCOS, migraines, etc. But that kidney stone - holy moly, did it do me dirty! I thought I was dying, it was so painful (if you’ve never had a kidney stone before, just know that it is the only kind of pain that has been likened to childbirth by people who have experienced them both). But alas, on the eve of Christmas Eve of 2009, I lay in my hospital bed, drugged up on morphine, as the doctor explained how my stone would pass. I went home in the middle of the night, and, just as the doctor said, it passed. Ever since, my body has made it its job to produce kidney stones as though it was getting paid by the pound. In the last not quite six years, I have been to the ER for kidney stones more times than I can count and have passed even more of them at home. Chronic kidney stones is now a diagnosis I give myself, because such a diagnosis doesn’t actually exist, because, as far as I know, most people don’t produce kidney stones like me. Thanks for that, body, I appreciate it. And then came the chronic pain. As if the ever-present kidney stones and the lingering migraines weren’t enough, at the beginning of my college career, I began to experience all kinds of pain in my body - joint pain that makes it hard (and, at times, impossible) to sit or stand or lay down in any one position for more than a few minutes without searing, intense pain; chest pain that strikes at the most random times and leaves me unable to take anything more than a shallow breath and frozen in a single position until it passes (usually in a few minutes); random muscle weakness (slash sometimes pain?) that leaves me unable to walk for more than a couple of blocks without my legs completely giving out. All these pains spring up at random, usually with no warning and no visible or obvious pattern. The point of all that is, my body is broken*. It is very, very, broken, and oftentimes, like now, when your body is putting you in pain or hindering you from functioning the way you want to be or “should” be functioning, it is angering and it hurts (in more than just the physical way). No matter how far you have come on your self-care and/or self-love journey, if you have any sort of chronic condition, chances are high that there will be times when you see your body as the enemy, when you question why your body is doing this to you, when you would like nothing more than to have a body that cooperates with your mind and does exactly what you want it to do, when you want it to do it, without the added struggles of pain, weakness, and the like. So now, I’m frustrated, and I’m angry, because it seems that, no matter how much time I give my body or how many things I do to take care of it, there is no end to these surprise roadblocks - the illnesses, the pain, the inability to do things I want and/or need to do. And I try to do be patient, really, I do (I’m a nanny and a teacher - patience runs through my veins), but sometimes, it is so hard not to just give up and bash and hate my body for not doing the things I need/want it to do. I’m writing this, partly to vent, because part of my mental health self-care is not bottling up my feelings (which I’m super good at doing!), and venting can make me feel better sometimes, but also because if I put into writing some reminders for myself, whether or not I believe (in) them right now, I’m hoping that this will be something that I (and others, maybe) can look back to on days when taking care of a broken body seems like too much to handle. 

Things to Do to Take Care of a Broken Body: Advice to the Future Ada

- Sleep: Knowing you, you didn’t get to bed before midnight last night (probably closer to 1am or 2am), and chances are, you’re exhausted. You need to make sure you’re getting enough rest! But if it’s going to hurt your body to sleep more (which happens to you sometimes), find something else to do; lay down on the couch, so you can rest your body on the arm of the couch and the couch itself, giving it some reprieve from the flat, laying down position that sometimes makes you sore. - Eat Something!: If you have not eaten in the past 4-6 hours, I suggest you do so; it does not have to be anything “healthy” or “good for you,” but also try to avoid foods that are going to make you feel worse (ie, avoiding caffeine if it’s a trigger for migraines). Use this as an excuse to eat those Girl Scout cookies in the pantry, or those bananas that are probably on the verge of going bad because sometimes, being a responsible adult is hard. Overall, just eat something to get your blood sugar up and give yourself the energy you need to take care of yourself. - Meditate: Remember how that wonderful friend of yours introduced you to the power of meditation? Yeah, you should get back on that. I will remind you that this is the only exercise you have ever been able to do that has made kidney stone pain lessen, so, for what it’s worth, I say you make the time for it. Now. - Binge-watch Something: You are sick or having a high pain day or a flare up or whatever. Your plans for the day (work, socializing, school, etc.) have to be canceled because you cannot function enough to do those things. So, instead of (or maybe, while) complaining and venting about your broken body, catch up on that TV show you haven’t had the time to catch up on, or check out that series that everyone’s talking about (but also, you can never re-watch Buffy too many times). You can also listen to podcasts or turn on Pandora and have a mini karaoke session in your bedroom for a bit. Do something that’s going to take your mind off of your body and let you enjoy yourself for a bit because, even when you’re sick/in pain, you deserve that. - Do Something You Enjoy: Play with Teddy (or another pet). Play the PlayStation. Color in one of the many meditation coloring books you have purchased that have been so infrequently used. Read a book - there are so many on your bookshelf! (The Glass Castle is always a safe go-to if you’re not feeling like trying something new.) Go on a walk (if, and only if, your body can handle it - do not push yourself!). Call your mother (or someone) and have a conversation with her/them about anything. Complain if you think it might help. Do something that makes you happy, even if only for five or ten minutes, because you deserve to do that. 

You are going to be in pain. You are going to be so frustrated and so angry and you might even hate your body a little bit. I don’t blame you - if it’s not okay for other people to hurt you, why should we accept when our own bodies do it to us? But you and your body will get through this, and you’re going to be okay. If it feels like you can’t take care of your body right now, focus on taking care of your mind and your spirit - what can you do that will make you feel less stressed or less angry? Find something to do to make your mind and spirit feel better, and then do that - make yourself a priority and try as hard as you can to take care of yourself. I know it’s hard, but you are so worth it.

* Please do not tell me my body is not broken, or that it’s just “different.” My body causes me pain on a regular basis, and if I would love nothing more than to rid my body of the excessive pain that I struggle with. Your wanting to tell me that my body is not “broken,” while well-intentioned, is an oversight and erasure of the very real and very painful struggles that my body and I encounter on a near daily basis, so please do not try and tell me that my body is not broken. There is nothing wrong with having a broken body, and by telling me not to call my body broken, you’re stigmatizing those of us whose bodies are broken, and it’s not okay. So please, if that’s the only thing you can say about this entire piece, refrain from saying anything at all.

Falling In Love With My Body

(Trigger warning: body image, self-harm) I am in love with my body. It's a thing I've only recently realized, and after many years of criticizing and degrading my body for simply being what it is, I am happy to be here. When I was young, as early as eight years old, I began to hate my body. I used to grab the fat on my stomach and wonder how painful it'd be to cut it off. I would stare at my thighs and measure how much I'd want to slice off from each side, seriously considering whether it was worth a shot. I begged my mother to be able to shave my legs from the time I was ten years old, and I began to pluck out my leg hairs in an attempt to achieve beautifully hairless legs. As I got older, I stopped looking at my body; I could no longer stand the sight of it. I don't think I was as repulsed as I was full of resentment - resentment for not being "normal," for not being "pretty," for not being "good enough."

I can't say at exactly what point my views towards my body changed. In high school, I used to get really angry whenever I'd go clothes shopping and I couldn't find anything in my size (something that still happens to this day). I started off by promising to lose more weight, but I realized that that wasn't going to happen (after many infuriatingly frustrating years of trying). At some point, something inside me switched, and my anger was redirected at the people who made the clothes who decided to intentionally exclude my body. I was pissed, not because my body didn't fit into the clothes in the store, but because the stores didn't carry clothes for my body. When I did find clothes, they were often shapeless and incredibly unflattering (again, still a thing that happens today). I grew angrier and angrier about the unfairness of it all. After that, there was a period during which I pitied my body. I treated it almost like you would a child who is bullied on the playground - I constantly told myself (and my body - I saw it as being a different entity from me) that it was okay, that it was fine just the way it was, that no matter what anybody else said or did about it, it still deserved respect by virtue of simply existing. I became very defensive of my body and bodies like mine, ready to attack anyone who threatened its delicate sense of confidence. I felt sorry for my body, sorry for the anger I had harbored towards it, sorry for the physical trauma I had put it through for years, sorry for the neglect I had shown it. I had done the same things to my body that I was mad at society for doing, and I felt sorry and almost ashamed for having done that. I felt this need to protect my body from the negativity it was going to have to endure for the rest of its life, and so I started to be kinder.

Within the past six months or so, I've begun to force myself to be more physically in tune with my body. I now look at all parts of my body, often with wonder and curiosity instead of the resentment I once radiated (bodies are really fascinating and also super weird). I made myself touch my stomach, not to grab its rolls or run my fingers over my stretch marks, but to literally just have neutral (and eventually, kind and nurturing) physical contact with it. I did the same with the patch of hair on my back, with the cellulite on my thighs, with my chin, and with my leg hair. I had to teach myself how not to be grossed out by my own body, then how to love and appreciate it, even when (especially when) I'm constantly being told not to. And this doesn't mean I don't do things that meet the cultural standards of beauty - I still occasionally shave my legs, I pluck my eyebrows, and I straighten my hair once in a blue moon. But I do so with the understanding that there are many ways for my body to be, and I can choose any of them, so long as I love my body just as it is, too.

There was (as you might be able to tell) a level of disconnect for me. I treated my body as though it was a separate entity, something that was not quite a part of me. I basically treated it as another person, and I'm pretty sure the reason for that is because I find it much easier to be kind to another person than I do to myself (which is pretty messed up, but I think it's true for a lot of us). I still do it sometimes today, but I've gotten a lot better about recognizing that, in being kind to my body, I have to cut myself some slack, too, and that's okay. I still apologize to my body every time I criticize it (which I find myself doing occasionally, because it is so easy to criticize your body when everyone else is doing it, too). Self-care is a thing I will always be learning, but baby steps are better than no steps at all.

It wasn't easy in the beginning, and it still isn't. We live in a society that tells us that our bodies will never be perfect, that we should hate our bodies as they are and should constantly be working to change them. That's especially true for me, as a fat, brown-skinned lesbian with more hair on her body than lots of other women out there whose kidneys produce incredibly painful stones like clockwork and whose migraines are miserably inhibiting at times. I eventually stopped pitying my body and started treating it the way I would want my 8-year-old self to treat her own body: with patience, love, and respect.

I now have favorite parts of my body, things I never thought I'd cherish before. For the first time in my life, I feel genuinely content with my body, "flawed" as it may be. I wish I could go back and tell 8-year-old me, standing in the bathroom, scissors in one hand and skin in the other, how amazing and special her body is. I'm glad I know it now, but I also know that too many people will never come to see that for themselves. I hope that the day will come (in my lifetime, maybe?) when little girls no longer contemplate removing parts of their body so that they can feel good about themselves. In the meantime, I will work towards creating a society that embraces bodies for what they are rather than punishing them for what they're not.

For those of you who are interested, I run another blog (haveagooddaydonttellmewhattodo.tumblr.com) where I reblog things related to social justice, lesbians, cute animals, funny things, and things relevant to...my life. Feel free to follow that as well. I'll keep posting my own thoughts and rants on this Tumblr. Thanks!

On Being A "Strong" Woman of Color

Women of color face a lot of oppression in American society. Holding at least two major marginalized identities, we are often undermined, rejected, taken advantage of, challenged, and overall treated as though we are an inferior class. We know we have to work at least three times as hard to get to where we want to go, putting up with an incredibly racist and misogynistic culture along every step of the way. Nevertheless, we work hard, we accumulate stress, we struggle immensely.  We are taught that, as women of color, we are not allowed to accept help or admit weakness in any way. We live in a society where we are constantly on the defensive, always with our guards up because we know that at any moment, we can be deemed incompetent simply because we live in a system designed to keep us down. We are taught that we need to be strong. To say that we need help is out of the question. 

So when it comes to taking care of ourselves, we are lacking in that department. In a society that has taught us that we are not our own priorities, we tend not to care about our own physical and mental well-being. As women, we are taught that the needs of others go before our needs always, and that as women of color, we are not allowed to ask for help when we need to address our own needs, even if for the sake of our health. So we put on a front, we tell everyone that everything's okay, even though we're falling apart from the incredible workloads, the stress, the struggles of having to survive and succeed in a society that wasn't designed to let us succeed anyway. But the more we hide it, the worse it becomes, until we can't bear it any longer and we breakdown, sometimes suddenly and sometimes so slowly we barely even notice it happening. We cease being able to function at all. We need to start taking care of ourselves, if not because we should matter more to ourselves than we currently do, then because it is an act of rebellion to self-preserve. We act "strong" to show those who put us down us that we won't be kept down, that we will succeed in an oppressive society. But we live in a society that has always been designed to stop us from succeeding, and one of the many ways it does this is by telling us we have to do it all on our own. We struggle trying to survive and maybe even succeed, only to have it thrown in our face when we're too burnt out to function, leaving those who didn't have to struggle as hard or for as long to keep riding to the top. Here's a secret: no one can do it on their own. Everyone utilizes help from all different kinds of places. Pure independence is a myth. As such, we need to learn that it is okay to ask for help, to admit that maybe we're taking on far too much. We need to learn to take time to restore ourselves so that we can continue. And most importantly, we need to learn that we're worth it, that we deserve our own love and attention. Because we've been told all our lives that we should hate ourselves, for being women, for being people of color, for not being good enough to meet the basic standards of beauty and success in America, we need to tell ourselves that we. are. worth. our. love. 

I'm determined to preserve myself, because I need to be able to function long enough to succeed. I need to take care of myself so that I can continue to help others (my own personal life goal - doesn't have to be yours, too), so that I can do what I need and want to do without risking my own health. This means that sometimes I take 3-hour napes or eat a whole bunch of chocolate chip cookies or don't leave my house for a day. And I'm learning not to look back and say, "Wow, that was a horrible decision, why did I do that?" I do what I need to do in order to take care of myself. And that's okay. I need to make sure that, in a society that is determined to take me down, I keep myself going. And for all that, I am learning, slowly but surely, to take care of myself.

For those who are just about to begin or are already on their journey, I encourage you to take care of yourself. It is so difficult to fight the voices in your head that say you don't need to sleep, you don't deserve to take a break, you absolutely must check everything off your To Do list tonight. We've been taught that we are not allowed to say no. We have learned that we need to ensure the happiness and satisfaction of others before our own. We've learned to believe we don't matter.

So you're going to have to do a lot of arguing with yourself. And it's going to continue for the rest of your life. But the thing is, you're going to live the rest of your life, anyway, whether it's spent pleasing other people before taking care of yourself or making sure you're well enough to continue. Either way, it's going to be hard. Like I've already said, we live in a society that is designed to keep us from succeeding - the roads to survival and the roads to success are really, really hard. So do something that makes you feel better, whether it's going to the gym, eating a tub of ice cream, or watching a show or a movie. Start taking care of yourself because, if you really want to succeed in our society, a good place to start is ensuring they're not going to make you destroy yourself.  It's okay to ask for help. Therapy can be incredibly enlightening (speaking from personal experience). Community is an immensely positive tool for helping you learn to take care of yourself; finding other people with whom you can share similar experiences and frustrations can relieve a hell of a lot of stress and help you (all) find ways to move forward. You don't need to do this alone. There are people who are willing to help - you just have to accept it.  I talk at length here about being a woman of color in a misogynistic and racist society. I understand (through personal experience) that our society is also ableist, fatphobic, classist, and homophobic, as well as transphobic, xenophobic, and a whole lot of other things that are in place specifically to keep certain types of people from succeeding. We all need to take time for ourselves, not only women of color. So even if you think this post doesn't apply to you specifically, it might more than you think. So go eat some ice cream or watch your favorite movie. Take a break and enjoy yourself. Because you deserve it.  You are worth your own love and support. Keep that in mind. 

On Being a First Generation College Graduate

Five weeks ago, I became the first person in my family to graduate from a 4-year college. It took a hell of a lot of effort and energy, not only on my part, but on my family's part as well, and together, we accomplished a huge feat. I could not be prouder of myself or my family for supporting me throughout this incredibly difficult journey.

But, as I am learning, the journey has only just begun.

As a first generation college student, my graduation from college means that for many, many things that I do from now on, I will be the first in my family to do it. I'm currently applying to grad school in the hopes of attaining a Masters of Education for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Before my junior year of college, I didn't understand what a Masters was, much less how to apply for one. Here I am, two years later, and I still don't understand what a Statement of Purpose is supposed to look like.

And it's really fucking hard to do something for the first time when you have no blueprint to help you. I'm sitting here, in the library, trying my absolute hardest to write a 2-3 page statement about why I would be an excellent fit for the programs I want to get into, and I don't know what to write. Having been raised in a collectivist culture, I never learned how to market myself or highlight my talents. I can't ask my parents what kinds of things I should include in my statement, because, having not had the opportunity to attend grad school themselves, they have no idea what kinds of things graduate programs look for, and neither do I.

You see, one of the big reasons people of color, working class people, and first generation college students find it so hard to, you know, do things, is because we're figuring it all out on our own. We don't have parents who have gone through this to help us write our statement of purpose or aunts and uncles who can walk us through the financial aid process. If we're lucky (as I am), we might have an incredible professor or two who are willing to help in whatever ways they can, but even then, they can't provide us with generations' worth of access and resources.

I'm just really tired of feeling helpless, like I don't know what to do or where to go from here. I'm not trying to make excuses (to someone who doesn't identify as a racial minority and/or a working-class student, this may come off as making excuses - after a lifetime of working excruciatingly hard to get to where I'm at, I can tell you that, until you've been in my shoes, you can kindly sit down and listen).

I recognize that getting into a Masters program is hard, no matter what your educational/family background is, and I certainly don't expect it to be easy. But there is a major difference between being challenging and being inaccessible. When I have to constantly forge my own paths and figure things out on my own while still not being sure that I'm even doing it right, that's a lack of access created by a racist and classist (among other things) society that is specifically designed to allow certain people to succeed while barring others from doing so.

 And don't get me wrong - I am an incredibly lucky and privileged person to have had the chance to go to college and graduate with a degree. I will forever be grateful for that amazing opportunity, and I am forever indebted to many, many people who helped make that dream a reality.

But it makes me angry and sad and frustrated to come to the realization that, while I thought I reached the finish line and got what I needed to get, it doesn't get any easier, and there is no magic I can use or spell I can cast that would make anything easier. Of course I work hard in the hopes that future generations won't have to work as hard as I did/am to get the kinds of things I have, but it doesn't mean it's not exhausting or infuriating.

And as much as I would love to keep my head up and focus on the bigger picture, I am tired. I am so scared of burning out before I have a chance to do things with my life and I just don't know how much longer I can keep this up. Basically I just need a really long nap and, oh yeah, living in a non-racist, non-classist, and overall just society would be really nice.

In the meantime, I will get back to my applications for the most wonderful and exciting Masters programs I have yet to find and, um, find a way to convince them to accept me.

Why I Hate Losing Weight, Part 2

Eight months ago, in June of 2013, I wrote a post called “Why I Hate Losing Weight” (For those of you who haven't read it, you can read it here). I talked about how I lost 33 lbs over the course of five months (for reasons still beyond my comprehension), and the impact that that weight loss had on my life. Long story short, when you're a fat girl who loses weight, people treat you like it's the biggest accomplishment you've ever achieved and could ever achieve in the entirety of your life and constantly warn you about gaining back all that weight, because we know that's definitely the last thing you'd want to do.

Well, shocker. I've gained the weight back. How much of it exactly, I'm not sure – I haven't been on a scale since writing that post, but I know I've gained at least a good portion of it back because my collarbones are disappearing and the rolls on my back are making a comeback.

And, as much as I don't want to say it, I hate it.

The thing people don't seem to understand about body positivity is that it's not like it's a goal line that you reach and then once you've passed it, you're safe and you don't have to worry anymore. Learning to love and accept your body for what it is is a struggle that happens every. single. day. As my body is beginning to change again, I find myself wishing that my rolls would disappear, and that my collarbones could be more visible to the naked eye, and that my stomach wouldn't bulge as far out as it does. And every time one of these thoughts pops into my head, I have to force myself to say, “It's okay,” and let it go. I have to remind myself that my self-worth is not measured in pants sizes or pounds and that it shouldn't matter to me what other people think about the size of my body and whether I'm taking up “too much space.”

And that's really, really hard. It's hard to not only ignore, but actively argue with, the voices in your head that tell you that you aren't good enough, and that in order to be good enough, you need to “fix yourself.” It's tough to do that when you seem to have no one on your side – it can be a really lonely battle to learn to love yourself, particularly as a (queer, PoC) fat girl.

It's especially hard when you're 22 years old and you've never had a romantic partner (that's me!). Now that I'm all done with college (yay?), I have all this time on my hands and I've decided that I'm going to make it my goal to find a girlfriend. In the almost 9 years that I've been out, I've never so much as held hands with a girl. Meanwhile, I see girls left and right who are just coming into their queerness and who are skinny (as the overwhelming majority of the people were/are at my college) finding romantic and sexual partners regularly. And so I've done this really horrible thing where I've begun to question whether it's something that's wrong with me.

Which leads right back to the weight issue. I know it's possible for fat girls to have romantic partners – I've seen it happen, I understand cognitively that it is a possibility. But I have grown up in a society that taught me that, in order for a fat girl to have a partner, the partner has to be willing to, in someway, go above and beyond for that fat girl, that the fat girl is lucky to have a partner at all (and should also be willing to settle for anyone, even if she isn't necessarily romantically/sexually interested in).

I have to fight (with myself, which is harder in a lot of ways than fighting someone or something else) to go against that narrative, to teach myself that me and my body are just as worth loving as a skinny body. I have to constantly tell myself, as I scroll through my unanswered messages on OkCupid, as I get rejected by every single girl I've ever asked out on a date (except one, but it still didn't go beyond that first date), that I don't have to change myself, and more specifically, my body, in order to be deemed acceptable, that someone is going to find me attractive for who and what I am, and that I will, eventually, find someone to date.

And it's exhausting. It's exhausting and it's infuriating and it's lonely as hell. Every time I tell myself I'm not being “good,” I have to mentally cross that thought off and remind myself that I don't have to answer to anyone but myself, and that I don't owe anyone else my disciplined body. Every time I want to cry over my lack of mutual romantic interests, I have to convince myself that I just haven't found that one person yet, the person who will become my first girlfriend and who will love me and embrace my body as I have to constantly remind myself to embrace it. And every time I notice a new roll forming on my back, or I realize the increasing disappearance of my collarbones, I have to tell myself that it's okay, that my body is doing what it needs to do in order to survive, that I should not feel bad for feeding my body or for catching up on all the sleep I missed out on in college. I have to tell myself that my body is mine, and that no one else has the right to tell me or convince me to hate my own body simply because it doesn't look like what it “should” look like.

I hate that I have to tell myself these things. I hate that I have to fight with myself and my heavily ingrained notions of what it means to be “beautiful” in order to convince myself that I am worthy of (self) respect. And more than anything, I hate that I can't just pass the Finish Line and achieve body positivity forever. No, I can't. It's a constant struggle, a work in progress that, as far as I know, never ends. It's a battle that I have to fight every. single. day. But I fight it because in doing so, I become my own ally. And while it's incredibly validating and so so so important to have other allies in any struggle, to be your own ally is the most secure, comforting feeling in the world, and in a society where my identities aren't granted security or comfort, it's a feeling worth fighting for – every. single. day.

Thanks for reading.

Love,

Ada

"Moving On Up": Straddling My Working Class Upbringing and my Upper-Middle Class Education

I come from a working-class family. With six people in a 2-bedroom apartment, things were generally pretty tight growing up. There were definitely people who had it worse than us - we always had dinner and we always got great Christmas and birthday gifts.

But money was always on our minds. We learned, from a very early age, that there were many things in this world that we couldn't afford. And when we were younger and attended public school with the kids from our neighborhood, that was all fine and dandy - everyone else was like us, so we didn't really see the problem with not having a lot of money.

When I was entering 7th grade, I began attending private school for the first time in my life. This was the first time I'd met White people my own age (my only previous encounter with White people were my teachers), and the first time I became friends with people who had more money than I had or could even dream of having.

And then things started changing. My new friends weren't like my friends from elementary school; they talked about vacations to Italy, France, and Hawai'i, they chatted about their summers in their country houses, and they offhandedly mentioned cleaning ladies and nannies, an overwhelming majority of who were Latina and West Indian, respectively. This was a whole new world for me, a world where people spoke differently, behaved differently, and had a whole new set of values (the first time I heard one of my classmates say she called her mother a bitch to her face, I was legitimately surprised she was alive to tell the tale). 

Eventually, I got used to this new environment. I was marked as different from the moment I started at my new school; my Puerto Rican heritage was enough to make me "cool" without me having needed to do anything to prove it, and everyone assumed I lived in the projects just because I was brown (I did not, and never have, lived in the projects, nor did I ever insinuate that I had).

Although offended, I learned to acclimate to White people's culture - that is, the culture of middle class "comfort," where money was rarely the main concern (the number of times I have been astounded by people buying $20 plain t-shirts and $50 skirts without batting an eye is way too high - and that's on the relatively cheap side) and people spoke "properly," in a way that made them sound intelligent almost to a fault. 

And I went through middle school and high school learning how to navigate these spaces where my body and my background didn't belong. In middle school, I was often ashamed to admit how little money I had - not because I was ashamed of being poor, but because I was embarrassed and upset that I couldn't afford the kinds of things my new friends could afford. Nonetheless, I understood that I had a different "place" in society than my classmates. I had been fortunate enough to have been taught, from a pretty young age, that I'm going to have to work harder than a lot of other people to get the same or almost the same results, mainly because I'm a (queer) woman of color. But when you're 12 years old and in a new school, cognitively knowing that and being able to emotionally accept that are two different things.

In high school, when I started at yet another private school, I was much less embarrassed about my financial/class status. I found other friends like me (most of them PoC) who didn't have a lot of money and who understood what it was like to constantly be living on a very limited budget. I managed to avoid social interaction for a majority of my first year, so I gave myself time to adjust to a whole new set of people. I came to the conclusion (fairly early on) that I wasn't wholly concerned with what other people thought about me (and not in a rebellious-teenage kind of way, but more in like a I'm-going-to-have-to-live-with-myself-for-the-rest-of-my-life-so-I-may-as-well-start-being-okay-with-myself-now-and-stop-caring-so-much-about-other-people's-opinions-of-me kind of way), and so that allowed me to carry on as I did in high school, having friends who had lots of money and not so much money, and everyone in between.

Now, I'm finishing my last semester at an elite liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere. My family is still pretty broke, and I'm on a severe amount of financial aid, which has allowed me to receive an education that has taught me to challenge everything and to think of things in new ways.

My education has given me vocabulary I never thought I'd have, mainly because I'd never heard most of it before. Now, I talk about things like social constructs and intersectionality and hegemonic masculinity/able-bodiedness/whiteness. I attend and participate in open forum discussion about how to navigate different spaces with various compounding and intersecting identities and complicated power dynamics. I have language that I can use to express, within the realms of academia, many of my own personal experiences as a person with many marginalized identities (the day I learned the word "microaggressions," my entire life was so. much. more. validated.), and I love that.

But as I am nearing the end of my undergraduate career, I have to face the fact that I'm going back home. And home, for me, is going back to my family, the family that has worked so hard to get me to where I'm at now, and without whom, I wouldn't be half the person I am today. It also means that I'm going back to a family that hasn't shared in my experiences, my academic training, my intense vocabulary expansion, and my overall education process.

I'm basically stuck straddling between two classes: my working class background, which has taught me the value of a dollar, as well as the importance of hard work and, unfortunately, the very valuable life lesson that life isn't always fair, and my upper-middle class education, which has given me access to language and concepts I almost definitely wouldn't have discovered otherwise, simply by virtue of the fact that I wouldn't have known what to look for. 

My ultimate goal is to be able to bring what I've learned in my time at school back home with me and make it as accessible as I can to the people in my family and in my community. After all, what good is having such an enriching education if I can't bring back what I've learned to teach those who worked so hard to get me that education in the first place, and who want to learn, but don't have the same access and opportunities that I have had?

And on the other hand, I don't want to make it seem like I think I'm better than everyone else in my family and in my neighborhood because of my education. I often feel really self-conscious when talking about a lot of these things I've discussed here, like social constructs and hegemonic masculinity, back home because I'm (overly?) aware of my position as a liberal arts-educated college student engaging with people who never had the same kind of access that I have to this particular language. I don't want to be seen as being haughty or obnoxious or a know-it-all, but I'm not sure I know quite how to make that work...

I recently read somewhere that working-class college students are forced to choose between leaving the past behind and moving up in the middle-class world, and keeping their roots while suffering in the working-class world. My hope, I guess, is that I'll be able to combine my working-class upbringing and my upper-middle-class education to hopefully create something that results in the best of both worlds. What that means right now, I'm not so sure.

It's been a process of figuring things out, and I'm nowhere near done. But I hope that I can figure out a way to do this right, and, more importantly, to not lose that sense of where I came from. I think it's too easy, especially in modern American society where we're all about "moving on up" through the socioeconomic/social status ladder, to forget where we came from and what that's taught us. I'm scared that I'll forget, or, even worse, that I'll ignore, those roots in the hopes of "making it big," whatever that means. I hope it doesn't happen, because I don't think it'll be worth it in the end. But I guess we'll see.

Thanks for reading, I know this is long. If you want to respond, please do so respectfully.

Love,

Ada

Ta Da! I'm a Lesbian. In Case You Didn't Already Know...

When I was 4 years old, I had a crush on a girl in my Kindergarten class. I sat next to her every day and did everything I could to get her to want to sit next to me (I even convinced my mother to give me bangs so she would think I was cool - it worked!). At that age, I thought everyone else was like me - of course, at 5 years old, you don't know any differently. I thought it was normal for girls to like girls and want to hold their hands. I didn't yet understand the concept of marriage - I thought it was just kind of a thing people did. So I thought that all girls were gay. And I didn't give a thought to boys - I really only ever thought about girls....

In fourth grade, I learned differently; someone had called someone else a lesbian on the playground, and although I did not know what the word meant, I understood it to be an insult. I went home and looked it up (in a real dictionary book, mind you - this was before the internet was at our fingertips), and my entire world came crashing down. That was the moment that I realized that I was not normal. Not only was I not normal, I was unacceptable - my identity was used to insult others, to make them feel embarrassment and shame. But it was a part of who I was, and I didn't know how to reconcile that with the world I lived in.

Don't ask me why, but at that moment in time, I promised myself I would elope with my girlfriend whenever I found her. At 9 years old, one doesn't really think things through too clearly, but my solution to the possibility of being rejected by everyone I loved was to simply detach myself and run away, to never be seen again by the people I was convinced would never accept me.

In 8th grade, I came out for the first time, completely unexpectedly, to a couple of friends in book club. We were reading a book in which one of the main characters was gay and I was making comment after comment that started with, "Well, if I were gay, I wouldn't do....," or "If I were gay, I would have....," and so she straight up asked me if I was gay. Completely taken by surprise, I answered with, "I don't know." Then I followed it up with, "I think so." And bam. I was out for the first time in my life to someone other than myself.

The shame that I felt that day is something I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. I felt like the scum of the earth. I spent the day crying at the bottom of the staircase while another friend of mine (the other friend who was present at this initial coming out) stood beside me and said, "So you're gay. Big deal, lots of people are gay, it's really not that bad." (She was being supportive, I swear!). But her words couldn't soothe the intense shame and embarrassment and feeling of disgust that I felt towards myself. I hadn't realized it until that point, but I had internalized a lot of homophobia from having grown up in a culture where my kind of love was seen as repulsive.

But I figured, at that point, that if I was out to a couple of friends, I may as well be out to everyone. So I did what every other middle schooler was doing at that time, and I made one of those quizzes that you can make online and put in whatever questions you want about yourself and have your friends take them to see how well they know you (these were all the rage in 8th grade). I linked it to my AIM account (I know, nobody uses AIM anymore, but everybody and their momma used it back then) and let my friends take the quiz.

Among questions such as, "What is my middle name?," and "What's my favorite color?," was Question #4: "What am I?," to which the choices were: A) Heterosexual; B) Homosexual; C) Bisexual; D) I don't know. Imagine all my friends' surprise when they got to Question #4!

So I had this one friend in particular who I used to AIM with everyday. She had this huge pink font that could be seen a mile away. I also had this really annoying younger brother who would read my AIM messages behind my back because that's what annoying younger brothers do. So my friend took this quiz, and then sent me a message, in that big pink font, saying, "Wait, you're gay?" And before I could minimize the window, guess who had seen that message? That's right: my annoying younger brother.

I think I yelled at him or something and then went to the bathroom to digest what had just happened, and by the time I came back (literally less than 5 minutes later), my older brother had *magically* guessed what my brother had found out. So now both my brothers knew and I refused to speak to the younger one for days.

Well, my mother picked up on this anger towards my brother, and she questioned me about it for quite some time. "Why are you so mad at him? What did he do?" Etc., etc., etc. I couldn't actually explain why I was so mad without telling her what he had found out, so I looked at her and said, "I'll tell you, but I'm not ready to talk about it." And so she agreed, and instead of telling her, I....made her take the quiz.

A note for everyone who is thinking about coming out: I encourage you to do so in ways you feel most comfortable, whether it is in writing or in person or on the phone or whatever. This was a horrible method for myself personally, and I probably would've done it differently had I had the chance to re-do it. But alas, what happened, happened!

So my mother sat down at our desk (the one shared by all 4 of us kids at that point) and began taking the quiz. She arrived at Question #4 and kind of sat there for a couple of minutes, unsure of what to click. Finally, she decided on option D) I don't know. Imagine her shock when the message, "Nope! I'm homosexual!" came on the screen.

Needless to say, she did not finish taking that quiz.

The next few days were a rollercoaster of emotions for me. My mother was upset because I hadn't told her before I told my friends, which I can understand from a parental point of view. But my home had not been made the most gay-friendly, to say the least, and I knew that I had to build myself a support system before I came out to my parents. I didn't think it'd happen so soon, or in that way, but it did. That's something my mother struggled a lot with, and I think still struggles with today. It's not her fault, obviously, that my parents lived in cultures where they were taught that being gay was bad, sinful, wrong, and they taught these things to their children. We kids also got that message from the media that my kind of love was unwanted, repulsive, wrong. We were a product of the society in which we lived, and unfortunately, a lot of times, it takes knowing someone close to you who is so affected by that hateful teaching to change the way you think.

My dad offered to work extra hours (on top of the night shift he was already working) so that we could pay for therapy to "fix me." At this point in my lesbianhood, I was already aware that no amount of therapy could change me, and even if it could, I wouldn't want it anyway - I loved girls, and that was that. So I declined, but I recognized the gravity of the situation: my parents were willing to spend loads of money that they didn't have on therapy, a practice they didn't really believe in at the time, in order to "cure" me from what they saw as wrong. As parents, they were trying to do what they thought was best for me. But as the child, the message I got was loud and clear: We will do almost anything to not have a gay child.

Fortunately for me, and for my parents, I guess, I am an incredibly stubborn person, and I didn't let their hatred for my identity make me hate myself. I hated myself already for a number of reasons that didn't include my lesbianism, and I wasn't about to add that to the list of reasons to not want to be me anymore. So I started coming out to everyone. I came out to my best friend in high school in January of freshman year, during midterms week. I came out to the whole high school in one of those "Step into the circle if you identify as...." games (that was fun - definitely the only freshman standing up there, joined by 3 or 4 other students and 2 faculty members). And after that, it just kind of became a thing about me. I was a lesbian the same way I was Puerto Rican - it was a part of who I was, it comes from a culture and a people with a lot of pride, but also with a long history of oppression and discrimination, and I was immensely proud of it.

So now I'm here. 21 years old (almost 22!) and still a lesbian. Coming out to my family has been a rocky road, but my parents have come such a long way, to the point that my dad isn't afraid (and might actually be proud?) to tell his friends he has a lesbian daughter. My mother is proud of me and all my identities, and really tries to be helpful by saying things like, "I love Ellen so much, I think she is so funny," and by bringing anything that could be mildly lesbian-related to my attention. My maternal grandmother and aunt, who have been like second and third moms to me, have accepted it as a part of who I am, and continue to be proud of me. My younger sister has been my biggest supporter, although I didn't tell her until I was a senior in high school (I wasn't allowed to...). Nevertheless, she has been an incredible source of support for me, as I know she would be. My brothers have...come around a bit. They're still pretty homophobic, as males are taught to be in our society, but they've accepted me (almost fully, I would say) as a lesbian, as their lesbian sister. My cousins have found out mostly through facebook, and that is kind of my choice, not because I am too scared to tell anyone or because it's easier to do it in writing, but because I don't think I should have to come out to everyone, because it shouldn't be assumed that I'm straight in the first place. That being said, if you have any questions about my journey, you can feel free to ask me as long as you're respectful of me and my experiences.

So that's my coming out story. I think it's crucial to point out that coming out never stops, because we live in a society that assumes we are heterosexual until proven otherwise. The same goes for transgender people - our culture tells us that people inherently identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, and so when someone doesn't, or when someone actively goes against the gender binary, they have to out themselves as something "Other."

It's also so important to realize that coming out is a process, and not a process that everyone wants to go through or really has a choice to. Do not EVER try to force someone to come out as anything - it should be that person's choice whether or not they want to come out, how they want to do it, etc. It doesn't make anyone a more "valid" queer person by being out. No one is required to be out to anyone to identify as anything queer-related. People have other identities to live with as well - my own identities as a Puerto Rican lesbian means my coming out experiences are so much more different than someone who came out as a White lesbian or a Puerto Rican gay male. And just because you have similar identities, doesn't mean you're going to have similar experiences. Everyone's story is their own. Be respectful of that when trying to be supportive of someone who identifies as queer. Love, Ada

"But Why Are You So Angry?"

If you know me, you know that I can be a pretty happy person. I'm the kind of person who prefers to find the silver lining/look on the bright side/focus on the positives, etc. I am also a very passionate person - I'm passionate about music, I'm passionate about ASL, and I'm passionate about rabbits, among other things. I thoroughly enjoy getting into debates and discussions about lots of things, especially things that directly affect me and my life (racism, homophobia, ableism, classism, etc.) Lately, I've sensed a change within myself that other people are also starting to pick up on. I have always been a passionate arguer - I'll argue until I'm blue in the face and I will jump out of my chair and clap to emphasize my points and I might get a little bit louder than usual. But within the past few months or so, I've noticed that, along with my passionate feelings, there's something else that settles itself into my chest and helps fuel my passion, especially during debates: anger.  Now, this isn't the kind of anger you feel for someone who has ruined your life, or the kind that you feel towards someone who hurt someone you loved. I'm not exactly sure how to explain this kind of anger, but it's not like any kind of anger at a specific person. It's more of an anger towards a situation, or towards a circumstance, or towards a systematic oppressor, the kind that tells you that you and your opinions don't matter. Neither clarity nor concision are my fortés, so bear with me here for a moment. This anger normally comes when I'm arguing with someone who comes from a position of power relative to whatever we're arguing (i.e., a straight person arguing what counts as homophobia or not) and, not only are they not listening to what I am saying (either as a person who experiences these oppressions on a daily basis, or as a person who also comes from a position of power and is trying to explain why so-and-so would be problematic and harmful for people who are not in power), but they're telling me that I'm wrong.

Now I will admit - one of my biggest flaws as a human being is that I don't take very well to being told I'm wrong (understatement of the century). And sometimes I am genuinely wrong and I need to consider my situation or position or beliefs or whatever and think about why those might be harmful.  But if I'm telling you that I, as a person of color, as a lesbian, as a poor person, as a person with invisible disabilities, as a woman, as a whatever, think that what you did and/or said was harmful/insulting/hurtful, your job is to stop talking and think about why that might be. And I'm more than willing to explain it to you - but only if you're willing to listen.  In explaining my positions or opinions on a number of things, I've been told, from people in positions of power and otherwise, that I'm too angry, and that I'm never going to get anywhere by being so angry about anything. What I should do, according to these people, is either not care so much about the issue, or try to explain to people who are blatantly invalidating and disrespecting my very existence why they are wrong (preferably using nice words like "please" and "thank you.") But please allow me to make something clear. I have a right to be angry.  I have a right to be angry because the color of my skin means I am either exoticized and fetishized or marked as ugly and unnatural and in need of being fixed. I have a right to be angry because I can still be refused service in a restaurant and/or fired from my job in at least 29 states because I hold my girlfriend's hand too publicly. I have a right to be angry because every single day I listen to people talk about how disgusting and undesirable my body and bodies like mine are because we take up "too much" space. I have a right to be angry because I have been taught since I was a little girl how to police my own body and sit right and eat right and talk right so as not to upset or tease men in the case that they just can't handle themselves with no regard to how I might feel about always having to close my legs and never being able to wear what I might consider nice clothes because, should anything happen, it'll be all my fault. I have a right to be angry because the very society that I live in tells me that, because my body doesn't behave in ways that "normal" people's should, I should be ashamed and I should fix myself. I have a right to be angry because my family is blamed for being poor and our (poor people's) existence is hidden, covered up, and forced to enter through the back door of a beautiful building because we are too ugly to exist. I have so. many. reasons. to be angry. Day in and day out, my existence is challenged, invalidated, negated, and erased. I have to fight hard to be heard, and then even harder to be taken seriously. And I am so tired of it. It is truly exhausting to feel like you have to explain yourself or offer some reason as to why you exist, or even have the right to exist, in a particular time and space.  So I'm not sorry if my being angry offends you. Maybe you might want to think more about why my anger makes you uncomfortable rather than focusing on trying to make me put on a smile so that you don't have to listen to my lived experiences and be forced to consider that maybe you need to change the way you think and act.  And I am always open to discussion - as I said before, I'm willing to talk to anyone and everyone, no matter how different your opinions are from mine. But if you think that a "discussion" with me is going to result in you telling me why I shouldn't be angry or why I actually should be more satisfied with my place in life, then I'm going to ask you not to engage with me. I've wasted a lot of time talking to people like that, and it's one of the most exhausting things I can imagine doing. As always, thanks for reading. If you want to respond, please do so respectfully. Love, Ada