Essays

My sexual assault is the main reason my girlfriend and I didn’t celebrate the love-infested holiday for the first six years of our relationship. Last Valentine’s Day, a month after we celebrated seven years together, was our first time embracing the holiday as our own.

There are some unique things about living on a mountain, one of them is undoubtedly the people. For example, the woman in Johnnie’s at the meat counter.

After years and years of fatphobia-induced body dysmorphia, it’s hard to actually just see my body with anything approaching objectivity. But when I finally looked at the photos of myself in my underwear, I knew there was nothing that fatphobia or my inner asshole could do to take away the beauty and the magic that was right before my eyes.

I entered society’s version of womanhood rather

*/

My mother and I may never see eye to eye on politics, and our value systems may seldom align. Sometimes it feels like we try to breach this divide; other times we dig a deeper rift.

I rarely have dreams about being raped anymore, that is until I announced on Facebook that I was going to India. Immediately, my inbox and my phone filled with stories about rape in India.

A million things happened in the 12 years between the two marches — including learning about my own hypocrisy.