Sam Dylan Finch

You were on the back burner — I thought you were Type 2, manageable, no big deal — which goes to show just how deeply I’d slid into denial. But there’s no denial here anymore. Just statistics and medical terms floating around in my brain, reminding me that I can’t afford to forget you, that you’re too “severe” for that.

Have you ever lived somewhere and thought to yourself, “I’m not home yet”? That’s what my body has felt like the last 24 years of my life — a mere point in time; a temporary condition. Looking in the mirror was the equivalent of sleeping in a stranger’s bed. I felt like a visitor in my own body.

What could trigger an episode? My life was perfect now. I took my meds (most of the time, anyway). I was a mental health advocate for a living, for crying out loud; I knew what I was doing. Besides, it had been so long since I’d experienced a real episode — I was practically cured. I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to hit rock bottom, and really, was it ever THAT bad?

I need to know that you love me with all of my brokenness. I need to know that you can see me in my most self-destructive, fucked up place, and you won’t flinch. I need to know that you understand the darkness and that the darkness is a part of you, too.

It would’ve been a whole lot easier if the writing fairy had dropped out of the sky and told me what to do, instead of wasting months and months trying to figure it out. So I’m writing this with the hopes that I, your writing fairy, am saving you a hell of a lot of time by giving you this advice upfront. Here are some pretty basic tips that have helped me to improve on my craft.

Imagine a scenario in which these highly-evolved dinosaurs, instead of destroying an entire village and kidnapping women (SNORE), were actually gentle giants that brought sexual liberation to a village of patriarchal, shitty human beings.

You can swear up and down that you meant it some other way, but the reality is that “crazy” and “insanity” refer to a lack of sanity, which will always circle back to and affect mentally ill people, especially when it’s used in ways that diminish or sensationalize our experiences.

Everyone, whether they have a mental illness or not, knows what it’s like to be in total despair and have no idea what to do about it. You’re curled up in bed, you don’t want to move, and you desperately wish you knew how to make things better.

This is fancy talk for “holy shit, I cannot make peace with my body today or ever, because this body is telling the world I’m a woman when I’m actually not.”

I spent many sleepless nights worrying that being transgender meant that I would live a troubled life.