If you were to ask me what period of my life I could live again, I would choose the month of October in 2004.

By the end of September that year, I was 18-years-old and knee-deep in my growing collection of newspapers that captured the end of Boston's ‘04 regular season. It was also the end of my difficult formative years - years that baseball always made a little easier. 

I still remember the first time I caught a glimpse of a game as a freshman. I'd stormed into my bedroom, slammed my door, turned up my radio, and mindlessly flipped through my TV until an expansive vibrant green made me stop. 

It was the outfield at Fenway, and despite the thousands of people in the stands, the entire park was buzzing with an electric silence. There was an intensity that creased along the players’ faces and people in the stands. It grabbed me just enough to leave my TV on that station. It stayed there for days, weeks, months - always flickering beneath the music and yelling and mess.

That's how it happened. That's how I fell in love with the game. It was the same way we fall for anything or anyone else - accidentally and out of nowhere.

I loved the patience of the game. The quiet tension that builds for a few innings or hours and how it all comes down to one pitch or swing of the bat. I loved the line drives and diving catches and dirt that takes over the white uniforms. The cold postseason games. The bottom-of-the-ninth, 2-out, bases loaded pitch. I loved the sound of a ball cracking off a bat and how it could bring an entire city to its feet while silencing another.

Looking back now, I know it was more than just the sport. I know it was the human condition at play - the need to connect and belong. 

So I fell in love with the game instead of a boy or girl. I was a product of a world in which loneliness and dysfunction prevailed. Baseball was at the other end of that, and it brought me a sense of community and faith and love all combined within the greatest game.

And that's it.

That's the whole entire ballgame folks and thesis of my post and why I'd choose to relive a moment of time that was built around a team.

We were all just kids when the game took over us. When our subconscious connected and transferred our deepest inner selves onto a story that was so much bigger than any of us. 

For some, a team represents time with their father. Their grandmother. Their experiences through life - both beautiful and painful.

Boston's stumble into the '04 post-season with a wildcard was how I'd gotten through most difficult events in my life: barely. 

Their complete collapse and abrupt rise within the 7 games of the '04 ALCS was an imperfect reflection of my entire adolescence. 

Their World Series win and triumph over an 86-year-old superstition was so palpable that I still, fifteen years later, tear up and get chills when I look at photos of the old fans who cried during that final World Series out.

I'd watched all of those '04 games with my best friends - three lively New England boys who'd endured their own chaos. We were kids, yet we were just coming to a point where we could actually feel like kids again instead of makeshift adults. Those games were the heart of it - the campfire that we always congregated around for years. 

Two of them have since died from overdoses. The third has drifted.

That October was one of the greatest times the four of us had ever spent together. To get those games and moments and friends back would be impossible. But I can still feel traces of them and us in games today. 

For some, a sport is irrevocably tangled with their past. Peel back the layers of the human condition, and you'll find that It's never just a game. It's something so much deeper and meaningful to hundreds of thousands of strangers. That’s what makes it such a beautiful, collective experience.

“As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight.” 

This quote is in the opening scene of one of my all-time favorite stories, The Revenant.

I didn’t realize its power until I saw it while in the middle of an incredibly dark depression.

Clinical depression is something I’ve been dealing with off and on since I was young. But the winter of 2017 was the first time it felt scary.

The island I live in falls into a grey stillness in the winter - a dull kind of quiet, peacefulness that I normally love. But that winter was different. It felt primal to me. Each time I walked outside, the land looked foreign.

My cold breaths looked distant - as if they were coming from a body that wasn’t mine. My skin would stiffen and lips would dry, but I didn’t feel much of it because depression had already numbed every part of my being.

Although I was never suicidal, there was a short time in which I understood how people ended up there. I saw that solitary road right outside my frosted bedroom window. And it was terrifying.

Then one night I saw myself reflected on my laptop screen. But it wasn’t me. It was the characters in a film. Hugh Glass, to be exact.

They were starving, messy, and wounded. They were isolated and cold. They were stripped of their former selves and left with nothing but their thoughts, fears, anger, and basic survival instincts.

I connected to it on many levels, but mostly, I felt that a survival story was a physical representation of what major depression was like.

Though the circumstances were different, I understood every part of Hugh’s void and every inch of what he’d become. I understood the natives’ violent determination to find the daughter and free her from her captives.

I intrinsically understood what anger and death and helplessness can do to the human spirit. The messy aftermath is powerful and irrevocable - strong enough to bring a dying man out of his grave and make him crawl across a mountain for revenge. Strong enough to lure a tribe into relentless battles until they find their beloved girl.

My life-long urge to protect my younger sisters still feels like a primal instinct itself. The blowback of losing a loved one at 15 sometimes still feels like shrapnel in my chest in my early 30s. When I’d failed to help back then - when villians won the narrative and death left me helpless - I too became stranded in my own life.

Nothing looked familiar to me. Anger was the only thing I recognized.

But that rage is a feeling and role typically reserved [and written] for men. Watching that movie and re-reading that book in such a deserted state ended up sparking a deep creative impulse to put it all on paper.

That’s when the power of therapy came in.

What I describe as gutting myself on a stranger’s floor, therapy allowed me to find things I never realized and open up in ways I never had before.

That pain inevitably became art because one day [December 13, 2017] I came home and started weaving everything from that bloody floor into a new manuscript.

I spent my entire winter & spring doing just that… finding gutted pieces of real-life anguish and compiling it into a made-up story.

Tomorrow is December 13th, 2018. It’s been almost exactly a year since that day, and I’m in a completely different place. If you had asked me a year ago where I thought I’d be today, ‘back in college and starting on the 4th draft of that manuscript’ would not have been my fucking answer. But it is the answer.

I am back at my degree. I am about to start editing the fourth draft of a manuscript that’s filled with strong female leads, survival, fear, and vengeance.

In therapy, I learned to let go of all of that. But in fiction, I wrote what happens when we don’t. I wrote about how those instincts and feelings can be the driving force behind survival. I wrote about the incomparable lengths a human will go to to protect and save the ones we love.

“I’m not afraid of dying. I’ve done it already.”

For me, the word revenant is a reflection of depression. Revenant comes from the French word revenir, "to return” and is defined as ‘a person who returns after a lengthy absence; one who returns from the dead.’ Looking back, coming out of that depression felt like a resurrection. Writing a book about loss, survival, and revenge felt like a revolution.

My novel’s century, wilderness, and people are different from mine - but the human instincts are the same.

“As long as you can grab a breath, you fight” isn’t just a quote in the film but a theme in the story’s trailer. Toward the end, the character’s breath takes over and drowns out the sounds of war and chaos - highlighting the most fundamental act of survival.

Breathing.

It’s powerful because it’s a reminder that we only need the most basic human instincts in order to get back up, persevere, and survive.

The hardest part about Dr. Ford's hearing has not been the reminder of the harassment and sexual assault I faced as a teen. It hasn’t been the reminder of the fallout of support that occurred after I reported. Or the widespread anger I faced every time I went back in for another interview with police or a lawyer or a social worker. It hasn’t even been the constant painful reminder of the number of women I know who have been harassed, assaulted, molested, and/or raped.

It’s been watching the outpour of sympathy for Kavanaugh’s well-being. It’s been listening to the anger about his ‘unfair’ treatment and the disdain for the woman who is trying to ‘ruin’ his life. It’s been watching United States Senators publically apologize to a man for what his accuser has put him through. This has been the hardest part because this behavior is why so many criminals are able to harass, assault, molest and rape with impunity. It’s why so many survivors don’t report and why the public doesn’t believe us when we do.  

I watched and listened to the entirety of the Senate Judiciary hearing with an open mind. I believe in due process, and I believe in evidence. Leading up to Dr. Ford’s opening statement, I had been watching the news and reading pieces from favorite journalists that detailed every aspect of how Dr. Ford ended up standing before the Senate. It didn’t take too long before I found how many people were already condemning her for daring to do so. 

Women who report sexual assault and show up to testify are not maliciously trying to destroy a man’s life or reputation. Reporting is not some unwarranted, criminal act derived from misguided female anger and vengeance. 

We report and testify because we are trying to hold criminals accountable for their violent actions. We’re trying to keep it from happening to someone else.

Because 90% of all sexual assaults are committed by repeat offenders (Department of Justice, 2013).

Because 1 in 6 boys and 1 in 4 girls will be sexually assaulted before they turn 18 (Center for Disease Control). Because 1 in 4 college women will be sexually assaulted by the time she graduates (Department of Justice, 2016).

This means that every time you're at work or in a classroom or in a room full of strangers or in the grocery store or walking down a sidewalk, you’re surrounded by victims. The chance that you’re next to a woman or a man who never even reported the crime (63% never do) or even told anyone is painfully unavoidable.

This is why your response to Dr. Ford’s testimony matters. Whether or not you believe her, the condemning language around reporting/testimony is adding to the belief that a sexual assault report is most likely false (multiple studies show false reports for sexual assault are at 2%-8%, the same as all other falsely reported crimes). Every time an elected official, teacher, co-worker, friend, acquaintance, or stranger expresses deep concern for the treatment of Kavanaugh and skepticism for the accuser, you’re telling the 63% of victims who never reported that their silence was the right choice. You’re telling the small percentage of the ones who did report that they were probably lying and their intent was to “search and destroy” an innocent man.

My experience of reporting at the age of sixteen and trying to hold a man (who was revered by our community) accountable in court turned my life upside down.

But I’d do it all over again. And again and again. 

I believe in rehabilitation and that people can change. But I also believe in accountability and justice. More than anything, I believe in protecting others.

So the next time a local or high-profile case comes up and you find yourself immediately jumping to the side of the accused and defending his innocence while raising a brow at the woman and questioning her intent, try to remember that your language matters to a vast percentage of people living in this country and all around you. What’s even worse, most of them are living in silence. Don’t make it harder for them to speak up. 

Let’s try to create supportive communities that will break down the stigma of reporting, increase the number of boys and girl who are willing to testify, and put an end to sexual offenders ruining and destroying innocent lives.

“It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides.

When I was 16-years-old & walked into a police station to report harassment and assault, Anita Hill was the only woman I knew of who had done the same thing. When I sat through multiple police interviews that felt like interrogations, Anita Hill’s story was the only one I had to make mine feel a little less alone. When I was staring at my reflection in a one-way window while authorities and lawyers stood on the other side, watching me give a videotaped interview, Anita’s televised testimony made me believe I could be brave too.

By the time prosecutors said there wasn’t enough evidence to bring to court, nearly everyone in my life had already taken his side. Some said it wasn’t sexual harassment but casual jokes. Some said it wasn’t groping but playful jabs. Most said I was a liar.

People keep asking why women wait to report. I’m writing this to remind you what happens when we do. I’m also writing this to remind you that Anita Hill is no longer the only woman that young girls and women have to look up to. These stories are everywhere now & speaking out is how we will change the fucking world.

I’ve tried multiple times to write #metoo in the last several weeks. This is the first time I’ve succeeded. I didn’t know how to articulate the weight that came with it. I wasn’t ready yet.

I am now.  

It’s been difficult to say #metoo because I still haven’t processed how many women in my own life have already said it… not online, but behind closed doors and in passing crumpled notes and the drunken after hours of basement parties.  

Saying #metoo means remembering every girl who’s ever said it. How she looked. How she felt. How her cries came and the moments her voice broke when she tried to stay strong. It means remembering the night a loved one told me what happened to her. It means remembering how I sat alone later and contemplated taking my best friend’s gun so I could kill a man. 

It means admitting fifteen years later I still have those thoughts.

It’s been difficult because saying #metoo means remembering the 16-year-old me who once tried to take my small-town Harvey Weinstein to court. It means remembering the silence that came after the world took his side.

So I sit here saying and typing #metoo because a powerful man continually groping a teenage me was not “playful” – it was assault.  Getting angry over a grown man making perpetual sexual comments wasn’t me overreacting - it was harassment. 

Telling authorities about a powerful grown man wasn’t the hardest thing I ever did - it was surviving the fallout of supporters. 

So… me too. 

When this movement first started, I was just finishing the fourth and final draft of a book about this very thing: girls speaking up against a culture that tries to silence them. I should have been one of the first ones to post. Yet I couldn’t even type those five letters. There was too much anger and pain and rage behind it.

I wasn’t like Rose McGowan who proudly held her fist in the air during a speech. I wasn’t like every brave girl who posted #metoo or her story. 

How I felt was best summed up when Uma Thurman said she was not able to say anything at all. She was too angry to respond. She wasn’t ready.  

I am not capable of summing our experiences up in just a few words. It’s why I wrote a novel about it. It’s why it took me so long to post #metoo here. 

But there’s an upside to this. Saying #metoo isn’t just about the bad, it’s reclaiming the void.

It’s watching one voice burn an entire village. 

It means remembering the 16-year-old me who still went to court to watch him plead nolo and accept a slap-on-the-wrist plea bargain. It means remembering how he couldn’t look me in the eye and how I kept staring – because fuck him.

Saying #metoo means creating and contributing to a new world where girls and boys feel a little more comfortable speaking up and a little less alone walking into police stations and courtrooms.  

If you’re not ready yet - if you never will be - that’s okay. Just remember there is a shift happening, there is a growing flood that’s taking them out - and it’s only just begun. 

Be Brave

The book The Price of Salt was first recommended to me as an infatuated 18-year-old girl in high school. Stubbornly in denial, I ignored the recommendation. It wasn’t until 10 years later, when its movie Carol came out, that the story pulled me in so deeply I still find it hard to let go of its words. 

For me, falling in love with a woman for the first time was so much more intense than falling for a man. There was no precedent. To paraphrase Carol, she was flung out of space. I’d never read about that kind of love in books or saw women like her in movies. So when it happened to me, when she happened to me, I looked into the world for understanding in art and there was just static noise. I had nothing but the all-consuming weight of everything she made me feel. There was no outlet, and it began to feel like a burden.

When I finally saw Carol, it was the first piece that told parts of me and other women I know so well that it was, at times, utterly overwhelming. It’s a rare and beautiful thing when a single creation changes how you view yourself and your own work. Seeing it for the first time was nothing short of the extraordinary moment when art eviscerated the world around me, silencing me while making me feel all of it.  

Because I still remember the moment I saw her signature on that sheet, unable to understand why her name drew me closer. I remember my friends calling me to catch up. I knew I wanted to talk about her but didn’t know why I felt I couldn’t. I remember how the autumn air shifted when I saw her again, unable to look away from a glance that had stopped me. I didn’t know what it was then, I just knew it was changing me, right there in front of the world and no one seemed to notice.

Carol was the first time I saw my experience so authentically and elegantly portrayed on screen, reminding me what it was like the first time I felt all of it… leaving me thinking I’ve been there, I’ve felt those things, I’ve said those words and had those arguments.

But that’s what great storytelling does. It puts you in the middle of its world and makes you feel like it’s all happening to you for the first time - or happening for the first time all over again.

You’re suddenly arguing again about what you feel, even though you don’t even know yourself what those feelings mean. But you defend and you deny that you don’t feel that way, that you’re not that girl, because it’s the only way you keep any sense of normalcy in a room full of the electric chaos she brings. So you swear you’re not in love because love would mean your world will irrevocably change.

And then it does.

You wake up wrapped in sheets that aren’t yours, and there’s a beautiful woman across the room smiling at you. And it’s the way she puts on her heels and does her hair, the way she kisses you and creates that burst of everything through your lips that makes you realize your life will never be the same.

When a thousand indecipherable moments culminate into one, it feels more than an epiphany - it feels transformative and transcendent.  I will never know how to translate that into my work, I just know when I find it in others. 

And I found that in this story. I felt it when she was first accused and exposed of what she felt, stripping her identity with just a few words. 

I remember the denial – my own and theirs - the attempt to rationalize that impenetrable, intangible force that made a mess of our world. 

I can tell you what it felt like when my family first asked me about it. I can tell you how their voices changed to whispers in the next room and I can describe the downward curves of their pursed lips. I can tell you about the silence that came after I told a friend. I remember the first time I cried when it was too much to take in and comprehend.  

I can’t describe how I became dismantled by the presence of another. 

But I do know that those moments still come now, ten years later, whether they’re fleeting or immortal. Whether it’s a woman or a man. Some will be lovers, some will be friends, some will be passing strangers, perpetually reminding me that no matter how much I fight and deny, we’ll never have control over what we feel.

That’s what this book and this movie did, they made all of those silent looks and loud moments infinite again.

But it all worked because Patricia Highsmith wrote an incredible book. Because the talented Rooney Mara & Cate Blanchett had chemistry. Because Todd Haynes directed art onto film. Part of me is glad I never read this book as an 18-year-old.  It wouldn’t have hit me the way it did as an adult. I would have denied parts of it back then just like I denied parts of myself.

And that’s why we need more stories like these. Because the girl I was then took over ten years to become comfortable saying it out loud. It took over ten years for me to start putting pieces of the girl I was and the woman she was into my own work.

The more we talk about it, the more we normalize it, the easier it will be for LGBTQ experiencing it all for the first time. 

It’s almost National Coming Out Day. I urge you all to embrace it. If you can’t yet, embrace a book or a movie or piece of art that helps. If you haven’t found one yet, I urge you to create it. 

Writing is work. Deadlines are stressful. The big publishing world I’ve wanted to enter since high school is still a dream and most days feels unreachable. Luckily, my inner editor is a woman who doesn’t fuck around and keeps getting shit done. I would have given up and chosen a much easier life goal if I didn’t have her. Here is a glimpse of what she’s like  

Me: I want to sleep in 

Editor me: 

Me: At the time I thought this was a good idea 

Editor me: 

Me: I don’t have the energy to work today 

Editor me: 

Me: My house is on fire, I can’t write today 

Editor me: 

Me: I edited 2,000 words this weekend 

Editor me: 

Me: I’m not in the mood for work 

Editor me:

Me: Will this revision work? 

Editor me: 

Me: I’m doubting my work and everything I do, can we talk?   

Editor me: 

Me: Wow, I’m kind of a bitch with my work 

Editor me: 

Me: I got so much done today, thank you

Editor me:

I can’t create without my favorite music playing. Nirvana is one of those bands. What made me fall in love with Kurt Cobain wasn't just his music but his intersectional feminism. He wasn’t just the barometer of what teen spirit smelled like or what grunge looked like, he was also a rock star who said he "could be bisexual" and a musician who wore dresses on stage to stand up against sexism and homophobia.

“If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of a different color, or women, please do this one favor for us: don’t come to our shows & don’t buy our records."

The best thing about working on a manuscript that’s set in the early 90s is the grunge-worthy playlist that accompanies you on and off the page. I didn’t pick the story for the music. I picked it because of the girls who grew up wrapped in the lyrics of that era. 

I was still a little kid when grunge was a thing, but I remember being infatuated with the girls. She wore silver rings on every finger and flannels that always smelled of stale cigarettes. Her friends wore headphones like jewelry around their necks and breathed lyrics to bands I was only just discovering. 

They were the kind of girls who joined bands because rock music taught them to love the things the world hated them for. They’d self-destruct behind velvet curtains and in LA hotel rooms and on stage under bright lights. 

I’d watch them from my school bus as they entered the high school across the street, always swimming in the idea that they were divinely perfect - misunderstood celestial beings disguised in grunge. 

I wanted to dress like them, talk like them when I was older. When I grew up, they were suddenly all around me, and I realized their lives were anything but divine. I found out most girls never joined bands, and I saw first hand how many of them ended up self-destructing all on their own, together, in their own bands of girls. They were always the brightest things at parties, always the axis of everyone’s universe that everything orbited around. I befriended them, fell in love with then, found out why they wanted to burn. 

I’m all grown up now and I’m trying to figure out how to tell the story of girls who captivated me and then broke my heart - leaving me unable to help them. How do I find the balance of life and girlhood and the law that blinded them, while remembering the music that helped saved them. How can I create lies into fiction that mirror truth - and not screw it all up? 

That's why I'm grateful for the music… it’s the spark that brings me right back to those school bus seats that smelled of dirty plastic and noisy classrooms and crowded basement parties, remembering what it was like to be near the girls who brought me to life, pulling me out of my stagnant daydreams and daring me to drown with them.

I once asked for people here to send me their favorite bands. I’m asking that again - send me your favorite rock. Thanks to a poster, I found and fell in love with the 90s band Toadies, who is on today’s writing playlist. 

The 2004 Red Sox post-season was one of the greatest times of my life.

I can still hear the echoes of Yankee classmates heckling me for three ALCS games. The 19-8 chants still reverberate in my body’s physical memories. I can still feel the burn in my eyes during class after extra-inning games. How the crack of a baseball off a bat during a freezing October night can bring an entire city to its feet. 

It was one of the TV pacing, rally cap wearing, 6-hour tension-filled elimination game swearing, bloody-sock pitching, extra-inning walk-off home runs celebrating, cry when you see fans as old as the curse crying kind of months.

They were cursed - until then they were the Comeback Kings and baseball beasts of the AL East and World Series Champions. 

I want to see Cub fans have that. I want high school girls and boys who have been collecting every newspaper baseball clipping since the end of the regular season (because she just knows her team is going to win) be able to add that World Series newspaper to her book of baseball mementos.

Yes, I still have mine.

I want the old fans who won’t be here next October to see their team finally win.

I want to see another curse reversed.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem recently said young female voters are choosing Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton because it’s where the boys are. It hurt, I won’t lie. It sounds like something that would come from Fox News and not the activist who said, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” I’m 29-years-old and this will be my 4th time voting in a presidential election and marks my 1st time donating to a presidential candidate (Sanders). From protesting with Black Lives Matter in Portland to working hurricane Sandy relief with Occupy Wall Street in Staten Island, to counter-protests at LGBT Pride events, to donating to Planned Parenthood, the NAACP & the ACLU, not once did I ever make a single fucking political decision based on where a boy might be hanging out or what a boy would think. I’m so utterly disappointed that these words came from Gloria, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned since I first voted at 18 (Kerry), it’s that no one’s politics or feminism will ever be perfect and we can’t expect that of our heroes. We can’t build them up as bulletproof ideological goddesses, but we can stay by their side when they stumble. And we can remain active and stay vocal. 

Beyonce just made a hit song that celebrates black physique, black hair, stereotypes, and humor, while reminding us about our sickening post-Katrina relief in NOLA and slamming systematic police brutality against blacks. She encourages girls to work hard for their dreams and grind till we own the things we want - and that the best revenge is our success. And she did all of this without pandering to white America. She mentions she did not come here to play, she came here to slay (i.e. greatly impress, amuse & dominate). She certainly just did. Ladies, now let’s get in formation & do the same. 

When Robert Downey Jr. was asked about his acting process and Scarlett Johansson was asked how she got into shape 

Two-time Oscar-winning Cate Blanchett 

Designer & author Lauren Conrad 

Award-winning Emma Stone 

When award-winning actress Julianne Moore was asked to put her fingers into a “Mani Cam” 

When award-winning Elisabeth Moss did 

Emma Watson

Rihanna 

Megan Fox

Nicki Minaj 

There’s so much to say about this movie & I can’t articulate any of it into a coherent conversation. This photo is by adam_relf on instagram - and it is everything. It is Luke. 

The same Luke we watched train as a Jedi (and made us want to train as Jedi too) and cried as we watched him hold his dying father. 

Suddenly fucking Luke is standing there in front of Rey in all his aged wisdom and with that one look so much history unravels inside of you - AND HE DOESN’T EVEN SAY A WORD then Rey’s crying and I’m crying. 

It’s stories like this that make you believe in some sort of magical force in storytelling because you have no control when it slams into you and makes you feel everything.

Master Luke.