I tried to lead restorative justice in my own sexually abusive (former) t4t relationship. I did this because I am an abolitionist and know people are more than the worst things they do. What I didn’t know at the time: we should have not been the ones to facilitate the process. With leftist language co-opted, I didn’t know I was allowed to leave; I didn’t know I was allowed to have boundaries.

Tell yourself that you’re not like one of those chain smokers, that you can stop whenever you want. Start smoking American Spirits, so it’s like, not even that bad for you because it’s natural, or organic, or something. You forget.

“Selfishly, I’m worried about what will happen if I say out loud that I’m uncomfortable with all this God, if I let my brain run its anxious course. If my atheist, queer, bipolar self comes to choir with me in all its unkempt glory, will I lose my safest place?”

“I’m going to be a single, poor, gay, mom, and it’s going to be fine. It’s going to be amazing. I mean sure, I might date sometimes, but I don’t need a partner. Partners just get in the way. And what are the odds that I would meet a woman I would want to be with who would also want to have children with me? I can’t even picture it!”

“I made a choice about how I would look, and didn’t realize until I’d done it how unprecedented that was.”

Now I start over, and rebuild, and confront fear and learn to drive alone and figure out how to secure Eli in the loft so I can still snuggle with him at night. Now I have to hang the art I’ve collected from friends over the years, find a place for my autographed Eileen Myles books, and learn to do yoga. Now I need to meet all the versions of myself hiding in this city and make friends with every single one of them.

We’re almost there! The interminable countdown to actually having a real, live baby is almost over!

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. After losing my first pregnancy at 24 weeks, how could we face the conception process again, with the added physical and emotional complications?

So maybe my pregnancy path isn’t as simple and straightforward as baby books would have you believe it should be because I’m a poor QPoC with anxiety, but it has been an interesting worthwhile journey so far. I can’t wait until I can take the next step.

Ah, pregnant beginnings. Literally and figuratively. The first trimester of this rainbow pregnancy (yes, that’s actually the term for a pregnancy after a loss). Is it possible to grieve and hope simultaneously?

I went to New Jersey and back, and I had a million billion emotions.

“If a group I was attending was still printing, distributing, and teaching from a book that was blatantly racist or homophobic, I would get up and leave and/or advocate for change. I do not give special passes for misogyny and sexism, especially in my sobriety, because my self-worth is so integral to my complete recovery.”

Sometimes, even the best laid plans are, well, decimated. Even a type-A mega control freak like me couldn’t control my own body when I was pregnant — and I certainly couldn’t control what happened to my son after his premature birth.

“If we think too hard, we’ll never do it,” Kellie said. She was right. A cost-benefit analysis would yield no practical reason to grow our family. The only reason to make a new baby was that we felt like it, and we could.

What do you do when the world gives you a mandatory day off, when nothing is open except Chinese restaurants and movie theatres?

“The fellowship said I was thinking too hard about it, that I was stubborn, and that I was not willing to admit that there were forces bigger than me. What they didn’t get was that I did believe there were forces beyond my control, powers bigger than me. Let’s just take gravity as one of many examples. I just don’t believe that praying to gravity or the radiator or the ocean would cure me of my alcoholism.”

“It is still quite strange to not be in school anymore and I do have to keep reminding myself that it is OK to take some time off. That I do not have to start my “career” right this second. That as long as I am lucky enough to provide food, water, and shelter for myself, I will be ok.”

She didn’t say “I have suspected this for years and I still love you.” It went more like a Scared Straight kind of thing but instead of scaring me about drugs and a life of crime, she wanted to scare me straight, straight. “Just Say No to Lesbianism” straight.

“As a lesbian mom, it was especially hard to fight the urge to do the “right” thing, however slippery a concept that was, because I was representing a community, not just myself, I thought.”

I now realize that Chinese is, for lack of a better metaphor, like a crazy ex-girlfriend. She seemed nice and inviting at first but then I realized she’s hard to deal with.