I Am Willow, Destroyer Of Closets #ThingsYouCantUnsay I hurt when I feel the walls of a closet. My body starts to break down. Sometimes it starts with muscle groups, sometimes it starts with the lining of my colon. My mind is occupied with coordinating the maintenance of the closet, while the pressure inside it builds. I tell you about my lived experience of this not to justify myself, but so those who have not yet destroyed their closets can recognize our shared experience. Because the closet is killing us. It kills our bodies, another day of suffering at a time. And it steals our authentic, self-actualized lives, one day of oblivion at a time. Each day I spend in a closet, I am dead. When the total number of days I lived is tallied, these days will not be included. The closet kills me at both ends of my life - it wears down my body, bringing a final end that much closer, and it denies me days lived now. I am radically opposed to closets. I believe that modeling closeted behavior for my children is the most likely way to reproduce it in their lives. Maintaining closets requires so much energy. Holding in truth is self-defeating. There’s no sense of renewal when I succeed. Doing so brings me no joy, only resentment and frustration. I don’t want this for them. I don’t want this for me. I won’t ask those in closets to demolish them; only they can choose to do that for themselves. But, if you’ve asked someone to stay in a closet, sit with what you are asking of them. I am Willow, Destroyer of Closets.

Riding the Avalanche #ThingsYouCantUnsay Every time I acted from my masks, I placed a stone. One for each mask. Every second I breathed, I acted from my masks. Half a statistical cis lifetime of breaths built a terrifying mountain. I don’t know how tall - the plain below has been hidden below the cloud layer for a very long time. When I tore off the cis mask and the man mask, I felt so free. What I didn’t understand was I had other masks, the manifestations of other closets, and that those were just as toxic to me. I didn’t mean to build up a life that was based on erroneous assumptions about who I am, but I did, because in a society absolutely dedicated to preventing you from knowing yourself, avoiding the hermeneutical injustice of creating relationships based on mistaken assumptions is difficult. If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say society is dedicated to preventing you from knowing yourself, then you have either my congratulations that you got lucky and fit perfectly into who society wants you to be, or my condolences on what you may yet learn about yourself and its implications for your future. If you know, then this essay is dedicated to you. Because when you find out you aren’t who society told you to be, you have a choice. It’s just one choice. You only ever get the one. In some ways, that’s nice. The choice itself is uncomplicated. It’s extremely simple, in fact. It is: are you going to be who you are, or not? It is a very hard choice. I married without the understanding that I’m a traumatized, trans, asexual, polyamorous lesbian. After coming out as trans, I experienced the ongoing stress of being in the closet. I could feel it in my body, in my muscles, in my organs. I came to understand what I feel like when the closet is present in my life. 1/3

Dance Party In The Dark, For One Or More #ThingsYouCantUnsay The hallway was dark. And a strange shape, clearly an afterthought. It was enclosed, ending in fire doors, spanning some twenty feet or so, running at a forty-five degree angle to connect a third floor hallway across a roof to an emergency fire staircase. Both overhead tube lights were out, but there were two windows onto the soggy night letting in faint illumination. Students had painted a mural on the walls. I was standing in this liminal space. It existed because the rules said it had to, but without a full sense of being. It was a place with ostensible purpose as emergency egress, a place whose practical daily existence diverged strongly from that purpose. A shortcut for those in a hurry between two very particular places. No such people needed to get to any such places at the moment. It was quiet. It was solitary. Out of my active focus, afterimages of a past I barely remember busied themselves in the hallway. That ground was heavy with the residue of time when I had been driven by scripts I never chose. It was precisely the space I needed in that moment to take my next step in valuing myself. To make new meaning for and about myself. I’d spent the evening hoping to dance, to feel myself inhabit space in this structure in a way I never had before. I was reeling from the realization that my innermost self, blossoming in transition, had no connection to the unique forms of meaning-making that had connected me to the structure and its inhabitants. I wanted to form a memory of being truly myself there. Dancing hadn’t been the vibe in any of the large, public spaces, and I didn’t push it. I wandered into the semi-private spaces. I found myself in the liminal corridor. I paused. 1/2

Ya know, there’s nothing like #polyamory to make me really face that only I can decide which Totoro themed duffle or weekender bag is right for me.

Trans Femme: The government is trying to kill me. The Cis: But are they really, thooooo… Trans Femme: I’m trying to kill the government. The Cis: TREASON!

I do a thing on fedi where I post: <sits nearby for company> It’s my way of letting someone know that I’ve been reading what they are writing, that I would be sitting and listening to them talk. That what they are saying and feeling is valid. I sometimes do this on positive posts (company is good for sharing joy, too!), but mostly when people are expressing pain or frustration or similar. It’s a way of trying to offer presence without activating the physical metaphor of hugs, which some folks don’t want in moments of intense emotion. But more than any of those things, it’s how I make space for them and their feelings without changing or defining the mood with my own. I’m trying to make it about them and their feelings. I often have very strong feelings about what they’ve written. If it is about a complicated situation, the person might have a mixture of positive and negative feelings, and in the moment, they are trying to explore those feelings. If I offered my opinions of, for example, how in-the-wrong someone else was when talking to the author of the post, then the author might feel like they don’t have the emotional space to feel their own feelings. That they must react to me (either by replying or just in their own heads) by refocusing on the complexities of the situation. I want them to be able to feel how they need to feel right now, and feel a little less alone about it. That’s why I sit nearby for company.

Okay help me, sapphic fedi. I need a “sapphic dance party spiting fascism” playlist - upbeat, focused on how amazing we are, with a bitter undertaste, like the bite of chocolate, to remind us of what we face. I’ve got: Muna “I Know A Place” Zolita “All Girls Go To Heaven” FLETCHER “Live Young Die Free” Janelle Monáe “Cold War” What should I add?