Going viral holding a sign that reads “My grandpa didn’t survive Auschwitz to bomb Gaza,” is not how I planned to start a conversation with my family condemning Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people. I’m not the only Jewish person who has long chosen to self-silence rather than stand with my values, but it’s not too late for other Jewish people to join me. The moment for Jewish-Palestinian solidarity is now.

One patient in the study “Observation of Trends in Manic-Depressive Psychosis” by O. Spurgeon English recounted that living with bipolar disorder “is like opening all my pores on a cold day and subjecting myself to catastrophe.”
I too have felt like a catastrophe of a person, a catastrophe of a star, a catastrophe of emotions.

“That’s right!” I shouted, feeding off their energy. “Clap because I’m gay!”

“Now more than ever, I think it’s important to say alabanza to those who were slain, to lift their names up in prayer and to remind those of us still living that Black lives do matter — they’ve always mattered and will always matter.”

“That instinct, to lie or protect the men who abuse us, is hard to explain. It comes from being afraid of the person who is abusing you, of course, but also afraid for the changes that honesty will force. We don’t want to endanger the men who hurt us, because we love them and we don’t think we can live without them… If anything, my identification as a feminist made the idea of disclosing the abuse even more difficult, because I thought it was something I was letting happen to me and it embarrassed me.”

“Like Russia itself, my parents’ instincts are torn. My birth country can’t make up its mind whether it wants its culture to be a part of liberal Europe or conservative Asia, my birth parents can’t make up their minds between simply loving their only child and feeling like there is something fundamentally broken about me now.”

“When the doctor said that such and such a treatment was linked to health problems later in life, I didn’t even blink. I’ll hit 50 and keel over? Fine, I don’t care, get rid of these fucking pimples.”

“I paid a dude to knock me unconscious, peel back my face, and cut out chunks of my skull and jaw.”

“Things seemed so big out there and we were just waiting for life to begin properly. I felt electric with anticipation.”