If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice, what would it be?

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My advice to my younger self would be to stop jumping up and down for approval that will never come. No one is ever going to accept you, and just get used to it. Find someone else. At least Dana’s mother said it out loud. My mother pretended her whole life that I was her pride and joy because to actually look at the situation- I love her, but I really don’t like her because I’m scared of her- was too awful to contemplate. Her words were saccharine, but her actions exuded pain and discomfort.

I was not a violent child; it was not that kind of fear. From the moment I was outside her body, I was outside her comfort zone. She could never see me as wholly other, wondering what having a disabled and queer child said about her. 

That has been my experience of Aada as well, that she does not see me as wholly other. She sees what having a friend who is a writer says about her. I did not realize that I found a friend based on a wound created by my mother, but the thought doesn’t hurt me. We often act the plays we’ve been given with other people, so that we can write better endings on the fly. Big scripts like your mother or your father take several iterations to work out.

Every woman I have ever loved thought I was defective in some way and I tolerated it because that was the script that was already written for me. There was not a world in which a woman loved me and there wasn’t anything wrong with me because I was never broken in the first place.

Aada pretended she loved me because to face the real situation- fools rushing in- rocked her self-image.

I write about Aada like an ex because my wires got crossed, not hers. It has always been an emotional attachment, never physical because we’ve never met in person. But that is not the only complication. She is straight, and I have it on good authority that she does not like wlw romance as it pertains to her person. She is fine with other people having it. This is acceptable to me because my feelings affect me. I do not need them to affect her.

Aada loves the polished, masked version of me. She is in debate with the part that is feral, and it is on me for ever showing it to her. She is in her room thinking the same thing…. that we each unmasked and we each saw the feral animal that lives under female scripted niceness. I do not know the Aada that you know, and I am really fucking smug about it.

That’s because she’s a forest fire you’ll never meet. But I fucking did.

The difference between Aada and me is that I have spent years unmasking and learning to walk through fire. Being able to take insults over my mental health, disability, sexual orientation, and gender (and more importantly, fighting back) has made me nearly indestructible. But the way I do it is to isolate and people don’t like that, either.

I do not isolate to the point of being alone all the time, but I do need space to decompress. I need to sleep. I need to walk around with my camera. I need to swim in the ocean, or at least wade in up to my knees. Being alone with my camera is my favorite form of intimacy.

This is the beach at Assateague Island. I walked with myself and we argued. We always do- my ADHD and autism make me two different people even unto me. I have to deal with my sensory issues on my own terms, and I do not have to compromise when I am by myself. I do not have to deal with another person’s inner monologue running about my choices, therefore risking judgment and emotional violence.

I know I am safe within myself, and that feeling is hard to replace. Anyone that comes into my life now will have to be better than complete silence, and that is the sexiest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.