juan

Also quick shout out to the girl from windgap, Missouri who internalized everything and had to see the deep wounds that generational trauma and abuse had caused within her family despite her best efforts to run away from it all. Shout out to the 16 year old kid who volunteered for her sisters sake in a barbaric exercise of governmental authority who in the end had to carry the symbolism of a century of deep oppression on her shoulders despite how achingly she wished to disappear, and lastly, shout out to my group of cannibalistic lesbians enduring the brutality of the Canadian wilderness at an age when nothing fucking makes sense. More specifically, shout out to the one I would more than likely be, the one sick in the head, without her meds, the one who is so frustratingly self sacrificial and desperate to find a deeper meaning in the universes nonsensical intent on making us suffer. And also, a little personal shout out, to the one who’s become a caricature of a villain. The writing might have done her wrong, but there’s so much there to be explored, about humanities inability to coexist amongst aggression and rage and instead immediately vilify any exploration of said feelings. No one is more aware of the things we’ve lost than us. Of the things we had to sacrifice just to say at least I made it out. Women’s rage, exists and functions, unapologetically, as it rightfully always should be. Yet for others, in witnessing its depths and its capacity to reflect an unyielding desire to make others comfortable, it’s a beacon of reassurance and hope. Revenge has never been a factor in my recovery. I’m far too exhausted to try and even begin to possibly wish for suffering on those who did me wrong as a kid. But that doesn’t negate my relentless honesty in my approach to let all of the suffering, guilt, shame, usage, of a mind and body id yet to claim, feel easily digestible when it truly never has been for myself.

Distraught, damaged, and disheveled at the reality that I was given the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack on vinyl for Christmas.

My mom, ironically, despite her intense love for Jesus Christ and her insistence on the fact that homosexuality was a massive sin, owned a copy on DVD of Brokeback Mountain because she thought it was a beautiful love story. One day I stole it and I watched it and I’ve never been happy since.