Notes

I wasn't sure what to do for this assignment.
There are so many things that have shaped me and that push me forward and that hold me back and that make me push and want for a better world.
So instead of hemming and hawing about how to explain everything in 2 to 3 minutes, I won't.

[PAUSE]

Instead, I am going to talk through my life as if you already know the story and let you put the pieces together because my story isn't what's important. It's the fact that I'm not the only one to have experienced any given piece of my story.

I met my best friend and now queerplatonic partner before either of us was a year old.
I'm Jewish and once cried when I accidentally turned off a light on Shabbat.
My dad is chronically ill, migraines and an assortment of other ailments.
I wrote songs.
My dad only seemed to leave his room to scream and yell and criticize.
My mom would say, still says, that it's just the pain. That he's struggling right now.
I was bullied for being too Jewish, even for a Jewish day camp.
I didn't really have any friends, certainly not more than a 3 or 4, until last year.
I tried to kill myself and started therapy when I was 9 or 10 years old.
I write poetry.
I want to help people because I can't seem to help myself no matter what I thought.
It only ends up hurting me and I lie and someone might have died because of it but I'll never know.
I cut my myself for the first time when I was in 8th grade.
I still can't trust myself to shave sometimes.
I asked my dad what he thought of bisexual people in the car.
My grandmother died in car.
I still want to die.
I came out as bisexual.
I learn that there are more lables than the ones I know.
Queer feels like coming home.
Queer is still my home but I've decorated it with words like ace-spec, genderqueer, aro-spec, genderfluid, bisexual, nonbinary, agender, genderflux, and biromantic
I
I learned that depression makes memory formation harder.
More days than not I think about killing myself.

I write poetry.
My partner says no healthy family makes you cry as much as mine does.

Understanding yourself, who you are, the forces that shaped you, and how you show up in the world is part of developing critical consciousness necessary for social change work.