Voices

Unlike happiness, joy is not dependent on circumstances and external factors — joy is the truest form of contentment and it is everlasting. That being said, it's still something you have to practice daily.

Black hair, like Black identity, is diverse and nuanced, but it still stands out as different from White hair. The point is not that all Black hair needs to look the same, but that we share the experience of feeling pressure to alter our appearance, to present a version of ourselves solely to satisfy the White gaze. When we truly own our bodies —the fat, skinny, scarred, hairy, melanated, unconventional bodies we walk around in — they will no longer be things to defend or hide or alter.

I barely had a chance to say “What’s taking him so long?” before he stepped up to the counter to ask me what he could help me with. Me. Not my friend who had been standing there for a minimum of twenty minutes waiting for assistance, but ME, the white girl.

[CN: emotional abuse and gaslighting, description of sexual assault.] As a three-time survivor of intimate partner violence, I hate what he did to me, but I don't hate the person with whom I fell in love — not even a little bit. My love for him will always exist.

[CN: cutting, dissociation, auditory hallucinations] I struggle with the need to have physical, visible proof of my inner world. That’s when I realized tattoos can replace my scars. I can reinterpret what my scars stand for and transform them into something beautiful, something worth remembering.

I’m terrified of wrongful imprisonment. To be the only one who knows the truth and have to live every day in a cell, wondering, why, god, why? [...] Sitting hooked up for gadgets to monitor every aspect of my mind and body, in a small room without any distraction, I see how a person could lose herself — or the truth — for a moment.

[CN: misogynistic online harassment; death threats; mentions of rape and child abuse] You shouldn't have to go to a great imaginative effort to humanize a woman to treat her like a human being. Spoiler alert — she's already a human being without you knowing her or caring for her or seeing her as a long-lost relative or even agreeing with her.

[CN: rape, victim-blaming, mentions of sex work] I felt violated. I felt angry that no one had stopped him, or stopped me from going outside with him. That no one had noticed how intoxicated I was. That no one had cared. And most of all, I felt utterly confused as to why I still allowed him inside my house after everything that had happened.