Steph

“The question feels so patronizing: as if I’ve never thought about gender and how I choose to present myself, how I dress, how I stand, how I crop my hair short, and what this means. As if I’ve never thought about what it would be like to live as a man instead, the relief that would come from passing, with not having to face the everyday violence and humiliations of living in my body. As if I’ve never thought about how I don’t want that, how every cell in my body recoils at that thought of being a man, and yet how harrowing it is that the only way I can get out of my bed and make it through the day is by wearing masculinity on my body. As if I’ve never held dear my feminist rage, never thought about how I feel so politically aligned with womanhood and yet hate inhabiting it, hate it when my body is read as such. As if the only way to be trans is to transition to a binary gender, as if I can’t exist as I have been, in some space in between or beyond, using she or they pronouns and seething when people call me a woman and laughing when people tell me I should transition.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“The night sky is dotted in bright little specks; the night sky is dotted in monstrous fireballs. I am the size of ten million ants, and I don't make up even one percentage of the weight of the rock that I'm floating on. Everything matters so much and so little; it is disgusting.

One of my shoes is untied. It would be awful if my shoe fell off and hurt someone driving beneath me.

I tuck my legs in.”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Sometimes when I’m driving, I think about veering into traffic. If I stand near the edge of anything, I think about stepping off. I can’t take a pill, clean with bleach, or use a knife without it occurring to me that I could end it.”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka said, “The meaning of life is that it ends.” Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create.”
― Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory