For when wiping the slate completely clean isn’t really an option.

I don’t like to think about the endings, which is probably why I’m always haunted, always clinging to things that return even when I should pretend I do not see them.

But face-blindess is a bitch.

Psychologists can see potential in every patient who is seeking therapy. I can’t look at my marriage without seeing all the ways we could still fix it.

Burlesque is my loving manifestation of what all my ancestors deserved—not simply tolerance, but unbridled celebration.

“This was after that night, when I moved into the guest room with the little bathroom, when I moved my toiletries onto the shower floor, when I moved all the books I was reading, and my perfume bottles, my department-store boxes filled with eyeliner and lipstick. And I texted my spouse that we were separating and that I had moved into the guest room, and they called me and wanted to come back to the house and I said, ‘No, no, don’t, I don’t want you to,’ and then sat on the front porch smoking, waiting, as I had set the stage for another cinematic moment to happen. And my spouse did not come home.”

It seems contradictory to say I learned how to view my body as my own by sharing it with strangers and friends, but it is a truth that I revel in. What I love and learn about these encounters are the parameters of my body, its strengths, and boundaries, what pleases it.

My acceptance of my own pain allows me to have the kind of sex that is rooted in the specificity of my body. I don’t love the idea that I’ll never fist, but I do love the idea that every act of sex I engage with is collaborative. Queerness reminds me that there is no standard way to fuck or live.

Because of the positive affirmation I received during sex, I began to believe it was all I was good for. When people wanted me, I assumed it was my job to provide joy for other people. I gave myself to a lot of people in that way. I had to remember that I had a right to pleasure as well.

There is a different level of intimacy and affirmation that I have found when having sex with other fat people. Thin people approach the fat body like a series of insecurities. They see the swell of a stomach or rolls of fat on the back and assume that you hate those parts of your body. When another fat person touches me, it is to be made whole.

I didn’t know then that Devon would become one of those women in my life who’s there for good, who I could not text for months and then suddenly dive right back in with. One of those friends who would show up, who would stay.

That’s what’s tricky about disabled sexuality: most people, disabled or not or anyplace in between, have no idea how to discuss it. So fear of “saying the wrong thing” takes over instead and the problem feeds itself. We never talk about it because we don’t know how to start.

“How could an incapacitated person feel let alone be sexy, I catch myself thinking. Now, when I have those thoughts, I take out my camera.”

“Despite all the planning, and all the talking, and all the money we had spent, it was THAT moment that suddenly made the wedding feel very real. This was the dress I was going to get married in, that I would be wearing when I affirmed my desire to spend the rest of my life with my amazing partner. But, it also touched something deeper, more complex, more fundamental to my transition and my womanhood.”

“Since the wedding has made me come out to more people than I had ever intended, this trip back to my place of origin makes facing their reactions inevitable. Will my physical presence stoke the intensity of their opposition?”

“My sobriety buddies warned me that if I violated the ban on dating before I was ready, I might be pushed into a relapse. Instead, I’ve just been pushed into never wanting to date again.”

I wrote a letter to myself about over thinking in a relationship. Maybe I wrote this letter to you as well.