Heart
In Human Parts. More on Medium.
Some pasts, once escaped, are too hard to revisit
Anyone who has been in my life within the past two decades knows little or nothing about my siblings. Not my husband, our children, or my closest friends. I never talk about them or to them.
My brother and I are 16 months apart in age and took the brunt of our father’s abuse. My sister is four years younger than me. I have no recollection of her existence before she was in fifth grade.
This is the last photo ever taken of the three of us together because it’s the last time the three of us were together. Since…
Telling me to forgive my father means erasing the years of abuse I suffered at his hands
My father was a bad person.
There are plenty of ways to sugarcoat it, or use lots of needless words to make it sound a little less harsh. But that would mean burying the truth under a bunch of excuses and cover stories — and people like me, who have survived the things I have, already spent way too much of our lives doing that.
He may be deceased, but he gets the legacy he created.
I see no need to be gentle to someone who was always so cruel to me.
My father’s character (or lack thereof) isn’t a…
‘A ship in the harbor is safe, but your ship is the reason I slid into your DMs.’
Two wrongs don’t make me swipe right.
Better late than ghosted.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and it’s the only profile picture he’ll ever use.
Don’t count your lovers before you’ve matched.
A life with love will have some thorns, but a life without love will be something your parents ask about every time they call.
When the going gets tough, the tough delete Tinder for a while.
People who live in glass houses should ask me out because it sounds like you could support my lifestyle.
Absence…
You should know that both his story and mine are completely true
Dear New Girlfriend,
I just met you for the first time.
I did not expect to meet you.
It was “his” day and normally he would have picked the kids up in the morning. He had texted me earlier to see if I could keep them until late that afternoon. I jump at every chance to spend more time with my children.
As I was walking them over at the end of our day together, I looked toward the house I still co-own. I was not expecting to see you. Leaning on the front archway of the main entrance. Leaning…
Finding meaning in the spaces between
GAP, noun \’gap\ :
(1) a difference, especially an undesirable one, between two views or situations
(2) an incomplete or deficient area
(3) an assailable position
Katie Ledecky carves water into shards as the construction men shatter the street outside our house, hunting for the source of the leak. The excavator’s teeth gnash asphalt while our dirty dinner dishes languish in piles in the sink since we’re forbidden from turning on the faucets while they toy with the pipes.
With our surrounding ground rumbling, crumbling, and caving in, our family tree is temporarily replanted. We spread our warped branches across…
On symmetry and queerness
Sometimes when your body is like my body, we are queer. Other times when it isn’t like my body, your body is maybe straight. Like it’s having a period and mine isn’t. Or maybe your body is healthy and mine isn’t, or thin and I’m not. Queers are two bodies that are more alike than not, so we can’t be queer at these times. Queers and bodies are spacetime sensitive. Except when they aren’t and then they stay the same (depending on who’s telling their story), because they are dead.
But then, in time, our differents align and we call…
After losing my brother, I learned to rethink love
When I was five years old and on a family vacation in Hawaii, my older brother Adam and I missed our sweet Sheltie dog, Charlie, so much that we refused to leave the hotel room. We were sneaky little masterminds and we had come up with a clever way to resolve our pining: We would stay right there inside our hotel room — foregoing the pristine beaches and perfect summer breeze for the starchy hotel comforters and artificial cooling of the air conditioning — and we would sleep. Going to bed would make the time go by faster. Plus, being…
A simple guide for a complicated situation
When We Match
No shirtless mirror selfies. No photos of dead animal trophies. Be a little bit chubby. Have a little bit of facial hair, or don’t. You can’t be too tall. Say you’re into photography or writing or art. Tease some sensitivity. Give a hint that you might have been married before. Like dogs, but don’t have them. Be from the East Coast or Texas. Spark something in me that feels like promise.
When We Message
Tell me my dog is adorable. Know basic grammar. Make a silly joke about anteaters. Be candid, but don’t overshare. Send an animated GIF of an animal. Keep the…
If you’re like my husband, you’d spend your last year preparing everyone you love for life without you
What would you do if you went into the emergency room with flu-like symptoms, but a CAT scan revealed a massive brain tumor and the doctor handed you a death sentence? You’d probably stammer, “I don’t understand” as he explained the glioblastoma multiforme tumor will kill you because no cure exists.
“You only have 12 to 15 months to live. Please treat every day going forward as a gift.” If a terminal diagnosis reduced your future to months, not years, what would you do?
You might make a list
If you’re like my husband, you’d go home and make a list. You’d show your wife…
