The Doe’s Latest Stories

“I think we need to put a pause on our sessions.”

This was the text message I sent to my personal trainer, shortly before he called me and we discussed exactly what happened. A few days later, I had to do the same with my therapist. I had reached a point where, financially, I had to put things on my life on pause.

The morning I texted my personal trainer, I had been laid off from my full-time, somewhat lucrative consulting job. To be honest, I sort of saw it coming. I had been working at the firm for a little over a year and it just wasn’t a good fit. So it wasn’t completely out of the blue. But I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. 

More importantly, with any job loss, it meant that I no longer had access to my regular stream of income — and this triggered my already existing financial anxiety.

I have generalized anxiety, and it tends to come in many forms, including financial anxiety. I must have inherited it from my dad, who is also prone to anxiety and who taught me to be frugal with money.  

As you can imagine, my financial anxiety went through the roof shortly after I lost my job. Living in Toronto is expensive. At the time I got laid off, I paid more than $2,000 in rent. Then there’s groceries, medications, gym membership, and therapy appointments. So losing my income—and the benefits that came with it—threatened my daily living, my stability and even my health.

The more financially anxious I was, the more I engaged in retail therapy.

I grew humble and desperate. I put many important things on hold, such as my gym membership and therapy, even though I needed the latter more than ever. I called my parents letting them know what happened. They weren’t angry or upset, but of course, they were concerned. They asked me if there was anything they could do. In my desperation, I asked them if they could help pay for rent.

“Only for a couple months or until I get another job,” I said, to reassure them as well as myself.

My parents agreed. For a good three or four months of unemployment, my mother and father flipped me a couple thousand dollars for rent. I was grateful to them — and I was actively looking for work so that I didn’t have to depend on them for much longer. During this time, my parents and my brother also advised me to budget whatever money I had. 

I didn’t. I found that the more financially anxious I was, the more I engaged in retail therapy. I bought some clothes online, most of which I didn’t actually need. I ordered in meals from Uber Eats a few times a week instead of getting groceries and cooking from home.

In short, being unemployed didn’t stop me from spending recklessly, and this time, I was spending money I didn’t have. The result? I ended up maxing both my credit cards, and my credit score dramatically decreased. Eventually, I had to borrow even more money — about $3,000 in total — from both my parents and my brother. 

My brother was hesitant to loan me money, but he ultimately gave in, provided that I pay him back when I was employed again. My parents once again gave in without question. The fact that my parents had no problem bailing me out made me feel increasingly guilty. I’m not sure if they felt I was taking advantage of them. But I certainly felt that way. On a subconscious level, I knew I didn’t really have to worry about money because my parents would always support me. 

As my guilt and anxiety levels rose, I embarked on more retail therapy and spent money I didn’t have on new clothes, video games for my PlayStation, as well as books and other accessories I didn’t need. I didn’t even have room for everything in my small-ish apartment. I was nearly hoarding. 

I grew fearful of checking my bank account. There were times when I didn’t even know how much — or how little — funds I had, and I didn’t want to know. It was just a reminder of how much I was spending.

Sometime after that, I visited my parents at their condo and we had an honest conversation about my spending. They didn’t resent me for having to pay my rent and loan me additional funds. They didn’t think I was using them. But they were concerned about my budgeting and they hoped I would learn something from this and get my act together. 

Eventually, I did. Late last year, I started tracking my expenses and cutting down on my spending. I also sold some of my unworn clothes to thrift stores. I sold some of my puzzles and PlayStation games on Facebook Marketplace. And I picked up some part-time work before, ultimately, landing a full-time job a few months ago. 

Now, in a way, I feel like my life has resumed. I pay my own rent again without having to borrow money from my parents. And I’m back in therapy and regularly seeing my personal trainer.

The first time I met a sugar daddy, I was 17 years old. Even now as I recall the experience, it feels like nothing short of a past life. A distant memory that lives in my mind as fragments of images: the checkered yellow and black dress I wore, the extravagance of the five-star hotel in Kensington, the depth of the anxiety that gripped me.

He knew how old I was. I had a policy—tell them how old I was and let them proceed if they dared. I was so naïve; I had no idea that the fact I was under 18 would only work in my favor. Of all the men I spoke to from the “luxury” dating website, only three became disinterested due to my age.

Jay was not one of those men, however. He found it sexy that I was leaving high school to go and visit him. He found it even sexier that when he asked what I would be drinking I told him I would have water, and he told the waiter we would be having prosecco instead.

It surprised me, as someone who was blessed with a baby face and required ID for a 15+ movie just a few months before, that the waiter took our alcoholic order without a blink. Little did I know this was likely routine for him. Little did I know that being a man with money meant that people didn’t ask questions. Sometimes I wish that the worker had intervened, asked to see some ID, or why I was sitting across from a man more than double my age, in my dirty white sneakers and a tight dress. 

I didn’t know it then, but that interaction with that greying businessman would completely change the trajectory of my life. It would distort everything I knew about relationships and love. Poison it, warp it into something sinister and toxic, a transformation I have been working to revert ever since I left that lifestyle.

One thing I wish I’d known before all my encounters: This lifestyle was not one for finding love in.

Several proseccos, a shower, some cute underwear and a wad of cash later, I left that hotel practically skipping. I had never been in a hotel so expensive before, never tasted a bubbly alcoholic drink so crisp, never held that much money in my life. It was a feeling akin to gliding on air. I wish I knew at the time that it would not always feel that way. 

I met many more sugar daddies – some offered great sex, some offered terrible sex, all offered much more money than I knew what to do with. One night I met someone close to my age for the first time, with a beautiful apartment in London. After the bedroom we made it onto his balcony where he took a business call, both of us naked, my eyes round jewels of disbelief at the view that beheld me. After the call he approached me, marvelling at how beautiful my silhouette looked in the summer night, and held me for ages as we stared out at London’s skyline. A city he had clearly conquered, but one I was just at the beginning of finding my feet in. 

Another thing I wish I’d known before all my encounters: This lifestyle was not one for finding love in. You were not supposed to fall for your clients or build meaningful attachment with them. Until I met him. Liam. Born and raised in California and living in the UK for over a decade. Double my age, with a sense of humor like that of my best friend. The sex was amazing, the conversation enthralling, and the way I felt in his arms better than both. We both knew lines had been crossed, but neither of us cared.

Soon the transactional nature of our relationship dissipated. Night after night at his place, dinner with wine, dates, and housesitting for him whenever he was away. I loved how safe he made me feel, the smell of his laundry, the way he kissed me. I loved how he just knew things. I loved him. One day he told me that he loved me. I said it back.

At this point I had decided I wanted to be with him, but to him I was old enough for everything except a relationship. So I carried on seeing other people casually. And my addiction to seeing those who presented me large amounts of money carried on, too, to his disdain. That was until an unfortunate event brought it all to an abrupt end.

His name was Anthon. After many months of trying to meet with constantly clashing schedules, we finally found the time on a Saturday afternoon. With hindsight I see why it was so hard for us to get together. There are some people that you simply aren’t supposed to meet.

I defied fate and met the man who would bring the sugar baby dream crashing down. The meeting started off so promising, but took the darkest turn and ended in assault. After that, I saw no one new again. No one except a therapist, and antidepressants once a day for a year and a half. 

Liam was understanding. He didn’t ask for details. He was gentle and tender and a rock. Until suddenly he wasn’t. He was controlling, vindictive, aggressive, consuming. I realized that despite the love I thought we shared, he was no more than a sugar daddy, who expected an abundance of sugar, whether I was willing to give it or not. I finally understood what I wish I’d known in the beginning – no man willing to pay for the company of a 17-year-old girl could ever be a good man. 

So, I left him too, for my own sanity and safety. But he never quite left me. None of them did. I found myself haunted by the remnants of these men, in all my relationships that followed.

I see girls now, younger than me, experimenting with this lifestyle for “easy money.” I want them to know there is truly no such thing. I did not feel the cost immediately, but it came later.

Now, I am in my healthiest and happiest relationship with a man who adores me, respects my boundaries, and is my age. Despite my very low bank balance and my boyfriend living 4,000 miles away, I prefer this. I prefer the peace, authenticity, and safety. And although this new normal feels strange, it is something I am happy to get used to.

As a medical student, I am often a wallflower, my presence an unnoticed accessory. Or I’m a taskrabbit, completing mindless jobs that the doctors just don’t want to do. In a way, the lack of real responsibility frees me to witness, to observe and take note. But it can also mean that I feel voiceless when I am asked to participate in patient care in ways that feel inappropriate and harmful.  

A few years ago, I started at a medical school with a social mission that prides itself on centering health equity, advocacy, and person-centered care in its curriculum. My program successfully recruited a cohort of justice-oriented, energetic future leaders. I was eager to not only “save lives” but to change them. I longed to be a part of a community of healers, bringing holistic care to the people by using the voice and power that comes with my training as an MD. 

As the years began, we attempted to uncover the many layers of our healthcare system. We examined health disparities and challenged our ideas of physician’s responsibilities versus aspirations to promote change. We developed pilot projects to uplift the most marginalized voices and then redistributed healthcare resources to them. This was exactly the critical analysis and real-life exploration that I wanted to engage in. But I quickly realized how incongruent these teachings would be when I entered the clinical setting. 

I was on a surgical rotation, preparing to stand in the corner for a pelvic surgery. As I went with the surgeon beforehand to meet the patient, I nodded as he hurriedly summarized the procedure, and barely introduced me as one of the medical students, who would just be in the room to learn. He asked if she had any questions, in a tone that meant “I don’t have time for any questions.” The patient seemed anxious, as patients often are before surgery, and wanted reassurance that she was in good hands. I don’t think she ever got that reassurance.

There are countless moments in the hospital where I feel shame, disgust, and denial.

The patient was wheeled back and put under anesthesia. The OR staff quickly and mechanically stripped her down and exposed her. It was then that I was instructed by the surgeon to perform a vaginal exam.

I watched as a nurse did a vaginal exam, followed by a resident physician, followed by the surgeon, followed by the other medical student. A procession of people, inserting their hands into the vagina of this exposed, unconscious woman, lying on the table. I vocalized my discomfort in doing the vaginal exam because it wasn’t clear to me that the patient understood that I, along with many others, would put my hands inside her in this way, for the sake of learning. Everything about this routine parade felt wrong. She would never know the extent of what just happened in this room. 

I see this happen all the time. Sometimes I’m with a doctor who seeks true informed consent, by clearly and explicitly discussing with the patient what happens in the operating room. But most of the time, it is more of the same assumed consent, or “don’t ask, don't tell.”  After I objected during the pelvic surgery, I was told that I don’t respect the hierarchy in medicine and that I just need to get my hands in there more, literally. I felt small and disobedient.

There are countless other moments in the hospital where I feel shame, disgust, and denial. When a larger-bodied person goes in for surgery, the doctors often call in other doctors to “come look” at this person under anesthesia, as if taking a trip to the zoo, while making comments and jokes about how huge their body is. One time, I saw someone wake up during her surgery, writhing in pain until she was given enough meds to knock her back out. Later in the recovery room, she expressed how horrified she was from waking up during surgery, only to be told it must have been a dream. I’ve heard conversations between providers about how stupid and dangerous of a choice it is for patients to seek care outside of their system through naturopaths, acupuncturists, doulas, and herbalists. I’ve witnessed times when an unhoused person shows up to the emergency department saying there is violence on the streets where they live, only to be labeled as psychotic and violent themselves, resulting in sedation until they pass out. 

I’m watching as people are gaslit, mocked, assaulted, and ignored, not just by this abstract health care system but by the people working within it. Systems are made up of people, after all. 

And what is my role in this? As a trainee, I am often meeting patients first, before their doctor comes in the room. I’m getting their story, learning about who they are and how they’ve come before me, connecting with them. It’s an honor for people to trust in me, and I feel a responsibility to them when I’m sharing their stories. But when I hand them off to their doctor, the story falls on deaf ears, and I watch as another patient is misunderstood, frustrated, and rushed out the door. 

I’ve gotten poor grades and feedback for spending too much time with patients and inquiring about their lives outside of their presenting complaint. I’m told that questioning grandfathered-in processes and inquiring providers’ decision-making is disrespectful. But aren’t these the exact questions my so-called justice-oriented med school wants me to be asking?

I’m an aspiring healer. I feel called to connect with people and facilitate healing spaces. Now, as I’m preparing to graduate, I don’t have any faith or trust left in the system that is training me. This system neglects and punishes connection and curiosity, while operating on hierarchy and paternalism. 

I work 60 to 80 hours each week in this setting, then play out social justice-in-medicine scenarios in class. It’s disorienting to participate in a system that often lacks empathy and humanity, then go sit in a classroom that holds onto faith in the same system to change. I’ve quickly become physically and emotionally exhausted. Staying “bought in” to this system comes with a level of cognitive dissonance that literally makes me ill. I’ve had a level of anxiety and depression that mutes who I am and numbs the world around me. I’ve felt like I lost my purpose and hope in this work.

How am I to stay engaged and faithful to a system that perpetuates harm to the patients it supposedly serves and also to the trainees who are committed to undoing this harm? I’ve realized that in order to protect myself, I have to dissociate. I have to mentally separate myself and my identity from the work that I am doing, in order to get by.

I tell myself this is just a means to an end. I’ve seen the light go out in many of my peers. We all came into this energized by the potential we see in medicine, wanting to be community and family doctors for people who look like us, for people who the system acts against, using the power of our degrees to affect change on an individuaI and policy level. And now years into our training, we’re all checked out and just want to get by. I wonder, at what point do we become the means to the end?

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

I’ve been working in human resources for over 10 years now. I've worked within a lot of different industries—legal, financial, insurance, luxury hospitality, telecommunications, manufacturing. I have what I would consider a pretty impressive spread of different industries on my resume. I got my first HR job straight out of college, and I’ve had a steady job since I was 16 years old. I've always, always worked since it was legal for me to do so.

I've never had a gap in employment before. I'm that person who stops a job on a Friday and starts the new job on a Monday. I never took a few leisurely weeks off between jobs, mostly because I couldn't afford it. I feel like I live within my means, but I’m still largely paycheck to paycheck and I live in a very expensive part of the United States.

My last job was at a telecommunications company. During COVID, that industry was absolutely booming. There was so much going on and so much work. The company experienced their biggest financial year in 2020 and it was super-exciting. But 2021 and 2022 were the worst financial years they'd ever had. They hadn’t given me a raise since the beginning, so I started to look for another job just as we started doing layoffs. Every month for six months, I had to execute layoffs for the company and it was really devastating. I was laying off people that had been there for over 15 years.

Then, one day, an executive called me in and was like, “Hey, sorry, this is your month to get laid off.” All they could offer me was two weeks’ severance. It was really rough. I think they would have kept me if they could afford to, but it was so heartbreaking, because I was such a loyal employee. 

I applied to 422 positions during an eight-month period. I heard back from maybe 15 companies out of those hundreds.

At first I was like, “You know what? This is probably a good thing. They are forcing me to go and find a company that's willing to pay for my value.” I thought I would be okay at the job search—I mean, as an HR head, I really knew what went into hiring. I have conducted hundreds, if not thousands of interviews. I've looked at thousands, if not tens of thousands of resumes. I’ve trained recruiters. I feel like I truly, professionally know and understand how to get a job. 

But I started to apply and apply and apply and I wasn't really hearing anything back. I was getting unemployment, but it did not even cover my rent. Months went by. I had to empty my 401k that I’ve built over almost 20 years. I was babysitting for people and shuttling kids around and doing any random job I could. I'm a mid-30s, well-educated, experienced professional who was like, “Yeah, I would be happy to pick up your groceries for you.” So that was pretty demoralizing. 

Between LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter, I applied to 422 positions during an eight-month period—and that’s not even counting the applications that were directly to the employer website. I heard back from maybe 15 companies out of those hundreds. Sometimes I got to the last round of interviews. This one particular company had asked me to do this presentation after telling me I was in the top three. I did a 45-minute presentation on a 30/60/90 day HR strategy, super in-depth, all the things they asked for. And they were like, “Oh my gosh, this is exactly what we're looking for. Fantastic. All we need are your references so that we can just verify your employment.”

I followed up several times after that, and didn’t hear anything for weeks. Finally the Chief Operations Officer emailed me and was like, “So sorry, this isn't at all the company we want to be. We hope that you’ll consider us in the future.” No outright rejection, nothing. I saw a few weeks later that they hired someone with half my experience, after I handed them a robust HR strategy for free.

Towards the end, I was applying to anything that had “HR” in the title. I was applying for entry-level jobs, things that were way lower than my experience level. At that point, I needed to get any job. My unemployment ran out after six months. My 401k was gone. I was having really bad mental health struggles, but therapy was a complete luxury that I couldn’t afford. I felt really, really desperate, although I did have family helping out. They’d say, “can we pay for your groceries this month? Can we do this, can we do that?” It was an unexpected godsend.

Eventually I began to realize that you have to be in the first 20 or so applicants, because every position I would go to apply for, there would be a thousand applicants after being posted a mere three hours. The competition was completely unhinged. Even if you set up an alert, it’s not going to show up two seconds after somebody posts a job. I got a few interviews for January, and pretty much every single one of them was because I applied at two in the morning, so I was probably within those first ten applicants. 

That same month, I paid my rent and that was it—my money was gone. I was on food stamps at the time. I was on free health insurance from the state. There’s a subset of people who are always talking about how everyone abuses welfare programs, but these programs were genuinely challenging to get. I had to call every single day and follow up. It really was very humbling to recognize my privilege, because I cannot imagine people crushing their way through this terribly broken system who maybe don't speak English as their first language or are single parents with no time to wait on hold. I was really grateful that it was just me, and I didn’t have any financial dependents. 

I finally got a new job starting the first week of February. This company just moved the quickest through my interview and offer process. I didn't negotiate anything. I felt so much relief and immediately accepted it, despite the fact that they didn’t have me meet the rest of the team, which I thought was a red flag. I mostly really like my job. I’m really fortunate that it pays better than my last job and is also easier. But there are definitely some concessions I’ve made: I’m back to commuting pretty much every day, the position is technically a step back from my previous one, and the industry itself is not that interesting to me. Maybe before I could be more picky, but all of a sudden it was like, “This is the best I can do, and there isn't anything more.”

I am in the kitchen making my seventh unreasonably large cauldron of tea. My 27-year-old brother walks into the kitchen and, without speaking, begins spinning in little circles. This means he is happy. I also begin spinning in little circles to show I am participating in the happy. 

We stop spinning. I estimate seven full rotations. 

“I did a thing in the work meeting this morning where I said my real opinion on what needs to change in the workflow, and everyone was there, and they were all looking at me, and I did it, anyway,” he says.

“You are the big brave!” I say.

“Conflict is the big scary,” he says, and emits a mid-decibel gargling scream. This seems very reasonable to me. 

He walks over to where I am by the kettle and rests his head on my shoulder. This is the signal to administer head pats, which I provide. It is fairly inconvenient for him because he is 6’3” which makes my shoulder very far away from his head. We persevere. 

“Thaaaanks!” he exclaims merrily, and runs at high speed back into his room, screeching.

This has become a very quotidian scene in my life over the last year since we moved in together. I ended an eleven-year relationship last year which involved moving out of my home, going to therapy, crying a lot, despairing at The State of Men—the usual stuff. Breakups bring with them a quintillion pains, and finding somewhere to live was one of them.

I did not expect living with my brother to offer such a balm to the men-shaped wounds inside my heart.

I will admit that I had some reservations about living with my brother. I am a pretty neurotic, controlling, highly-strung person and I like things to be clean and quiet and orderly. My brother is a big hairy autistic man with ADHD and different priorities and preferences to mine. He is also kind and tender and open-hearted and generous. I also needed somewhere to live. 

In the course of my recovery from the breakup, I faced down some very painful and shame-inducing realities. I acknowledged the significant part I had played in the demise of my relationship, I looked at my desire to control the people around me in order to experience a sense of safety, I opened the barnacle-encrusted box of my deeply rooted avoidance and aloofness. Interwoven throughout this process was the undercurrent of my terror of men. 

I am a survivor of sexual violence and physical violence. I am the eldest daughter of a single mother who was left to parent mostly alone when I was nine, my brother was five, and my sister was just two years old. I have been followed home at night, I have been assaulted while dancing with my friends, and in the broad daylight of the street, I’ve been cat-called, spat at, pushed, intimidated, and harassed by men. To top it all off, I am an academic with a doctorate in sociology. My work looks at how women are using tiny houses to change their experience of patriarchy and capitalism, which means I am in daily contact with the evidence that cis-het men are often disappointing, dangerous, or deadly to women. 

This is not a hopeful backdrop. 

Luckily, I am at least bisexual, so there is some reprieve for me there in the knowledge that I don’t have to date men. But, despite the armor of my bisexuality, I do still have to come into contact with men on the regular. My own dad is a man, for example. Many of my cherished friends are men. I even want to be able to smile cheerfully at men on the street and say “good morning” to them because I am British and live in the North and that’s what we do ‘round ‘ere. 

I did not expect living with my brother to offer such a balm to the men-shaped wounds inside my heart. I am more grateful to him than I can say. 

Last month I came into the kitchen where my little (enormous) brother was and stamped my feet loudly because I was frustrated at not being able to do a squat without pain after I broke my leg three years ago. 

He immediately turned around and stamped his feet back loudly at me. This is his super-cool, non-verbal way of acknowledging and making space for what I am feeling and expressing at the time. 

“Angry!” I shouted, and stamped my feet more. 

“Much angry!” He echoed back to me, and we stamped our feet and flailed around wildly together for a full minute. 

I never did this kind of thing before we lived together. I have been trained by Western culture to prioritize intellectualizing my experiences—analyzing them, talking about them. 

My brother has created a permissive and witnessing space where I can express my feelings physically, in a body-led rather than a head-led way. This is a huge and unexpected gift. 

After this kitchen-flailing episode, he congratulated me. 

“Well done.” He said. “It’s good to see you expressing like that.”

I have never been praised for expressing anger. It was a very generous gift, indeed. 

He also loves hugs and is great at expressing affection. Despite being a big man with the latent physical potential for intimidation or danger, he is a soft, warm, safe man to be around. He is unafraid to ask for help and advice. He does not pretend to know it all. He does not pretend to have no feelings. 

Last week he came to ask me about how to handle something at work. 

“Please can I ask for your advice?” he said, poking his head round my bedroom door.  “Am I missing something here? Is this a normie thing that I am not getting?” 

We read over an email together and problem-solved how to answer it so that everyone felt good.

It’s this lack of ego, the willingness to ask for help, the level of genuine friendship he offers me that has gone such a long way to re-igniting my belief in the goodness of men. Living with my brother has proved to me that men can be the source of nurturing, caring, thoughtful attention and support. He has given me hope for what kind of relationships my future can contain. He has given me hope for men.

I’m usually the most informed person in a lot of rooms when it comes to queer knowledge. That’s why I felt more than a little foolish when it took me three decades of life—and an adult animated cartoon series—for the lightbulb to switch on over my head. 

In Asia, especially when I was growing up, the LGBTQ+ movement was not visible, nor did we have an established community in our country. However, we did have a progressive local library, and when I was 16 the book club decided to read Bend It Like Beckham. Teenage me puzzled over the lines “Tony was gay?” and “Get your lesbian feet off my slippers!” and decided to Google what these meant. I credit that book for opening doors to a world I had no idea existed until then.  

At the time, I didn’t think I was queer; I was just curious. A few years passed, and while I can’t pinpoint a precise moment when things changed, suddenly I had finished school and there was a small queer community raising rainbow flags for Pride. I still didn’t think I was queer, despite never having dated, never having an interest in anyone, and always being very uncomfortable when the rumors spread about me being gay. However, I was definitely an ally, and I was happy to see the flags. 

My lack of dating confused not only my friends, but my teachers, my parents, and a whole lot of other adults who really should not have been concerned with my love life (or lack thereof). 

When my best friend confessed their feelings for me, my eloquent response was “....oh.” I tried dating, because I was truly fond of them, but it didn’t feel different from when we were friends. They were a typical hormonal teenager; I agreed to try a few things but I was largely indifferent. The moment they wanted the pants to come off, I put a stop to it. Nope. No way. I wasn’t sure why I put such a hard stop to it, either. I thought I was not ready. I blamed it on the conservative environment I grew up in. I genuinely cannot call this a relationship because I still don’t know what it was, but it lasted a grand total of three months. I lost my best friend. Teenage me decided dating was silly. Why would you want to date when you can be friends instead?

As I read more and more stories about an aroace character and his friendships, the more I realized “This is all I want."

Things changed more tangibly in the next few years, when I moved out of my town, went to college, and still didn’t see the appeal of dating someone, and worse, couldn’t answer my friends when they asked who the cute guys at the parties were because I truly couldn’t tell. When my friend group was open enough to talk about their sex lives and that made my stomach turn without fail, I knew without doubt that I was asexual. I was, in fact, rather glad. At least the “no” was very clear, and I didn’t have to figure out whether I’d be into sex or not. At the same time, my demisexual friends were trying to figure out physical attraction, so I was quite happy to not be dealing with that confusion. 

I started being open about being asexual simply as a deterrent to awkward social situations. 

“So who do you like?”
“I’m ace.”
“Do you have any crushes?”
“I’m ace.”
“What are you doing Friday?”
“I’m ace.”
“You’ll find a partner eventually.”
“I’m ace.” 

Of course I knew that being asexual didn’t mean I couldn’t have a relationship, but I took advantage of the fact that for almost every person, this was a dealbreaker. In fact, in a decade or so, not a single person ever responded with “That’s okay, I can work with that,” or anything close. For everyone else, physical intimacy was a compulsory aspect of a romantic relationship. For me, I couldn’t fathom how all my friends stayed with their partners while having sex. 

I still held out hope that someday I would find someone. But in the meantime, I was blissfully happy with my college friends, and my new best friend in particular, a person I absolutely adored. It became a running joke for us to say “Why would we date when nothing would change?”

Two years ago they found a partner, and our friendship went through a spectacular fall, much to my confusion. I didn’t see why us being friends was a problem. Then I heard through mutual friends that they were saying I expected them to be a partner to me, not a friend. I felt betrayed. But I chalked it up to people being weird and untrusting, and I moved on. 

Things stayed like that for a while. I was lonely, but I knew being asexual was a dealbreaker for most; in our country, relationships were very traditional. Even my demi friends were having sex once they got into loving relationships. I resigned myself to being alone, the odd wheel in every friend group. 

Then earlier this year, Hazbin Hotel came out. I love animated shows, and I love queer characters even more. One of the characters was rumored to be aroace, which means “aromantic asexual”: largely does not feel romantic or sexual attraction. There was aroace representation in the mainstream media. I was thrilled. I binged the season in one day. And I fell in love (platonically!) with Alastor. 

The feeling of seeing a flamboyant ace person with a loud personality on screen was cathartic. And what this show did, for the first time in my life, was hint at how Alastor formed very close friendships, in particular with a character called Rosie. I loved this dynamic, so off I went to read fanfiction about the two. As I read more and more stories about an aroace character and his friendships, the more I realized “This is all I want. I don’t want anything more than this.” I started to question why I had thought I wanted a romantic relationship all this time. 

One day I came across a new fic where a character tells a very confused Alastor that “a romantic relationship doesn’t equal friendship + lust, you know.” “It doesn’t?” asked Alastor. “It DOESN’T?” I yelled. 

After a week or so of frantic Wiki reading, I realized I related to the aroace pages that I had never bothered checking before. I prided myself on keeping up to date, but I had never, not once, thought of checking whether I was feeling romantic attraction or not. I assumed I was sex-repulsed, and since I wasn’t repulsed by the idea of dating, that I was fine. Oops. 

It was a validation I hadn’t realized I needed. I ran to one of my friends excited. “Hey, so I think I’m aroace,” I told her. “Oh,” she replied. “Was this not known? I had assumed this was the case and moved on a while back.” I could only laugh at myself. Are we even queer if our friends don’t figure us out before we do?

I am grateful beyond words and indebted to Bend It Like Beckham and Hazbin Hotel for their stories being out in the world. A lot of people complain when queer people cry about representation in the media. All I can say is that I, with the world at my fingertips, wouldn’t have known what to look for if the stories hadn’t told me what was real. I wouldn’t have known what to relate to if the stories hadn’t shown people like me.

In 2017, Sirius-XMU kept playing a song called “Apocalypse,” and every time I heard it, I had to pull off the road, so siren-like the sound.

I must have heard the song 40 or 50 times before I looked up the band and discovered that Cigarettes After Sex’s lead singer was a man. I immediately wondered what was wrong with me. Not my ears, not my attention. Me.

My mind had been picturing a ‘50s torch singer—someone like Peggy Lee or Julie London, or cutting to the ‘80s, Julee Cruise, David Lynch’s choice for soundtracks from Blue Velvet to Twin Peaks. I had been so certain that the singer was a woman, and when I found out that he wasn’t, I started wondering again about what it might mean that I’m attracted to a man’s voice. 

I lean to the heterosexual end of the spectrum. I don’t find most men attractive, but there are exceptions. David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust phase. Mick Jagger, too, long ago. And that long-haired disc jockey who kept talking to me when I was seventeen. I don’t reject men as sexual partners in the abstract, just in my reality. I’ve seen and heard enough not to trust men with my body, and I suppose I’ve felt this way ever since my childhood pediatrician tried and finally succeeded in touching me in ways that all my instincts were raging against. I was only 12 and knew what he was doing was wrong, but I had grown tired of stopping him all alone. Of course, I never told anyone about his touch.

As a young adult, I did consent to one man touching me like that. Nothing happened when he did: nothing good, nothing bad. Just nothing. I felt nothing and offered nothing. He finally grew tired of the nothing and so quit trying for something. I knew he had sex with men and women as often as he could. He was a close friend of mine; we went dancing together sometimes. Years after these dancehall days, he caught the AIDS virus. He became an advocate for safe sex and health care for gay men. He died before I could see him again or touch him.

Men too often force themselves into whomever they can, and I just don’t want anything forced into me.

I used to dance with men and women in gay clubs, and sometimes I danced with strangers, and sometimes I kissed them, too. Some wanted to take me home, but I wouldn’t go with them. I didn’t always know what I was doing there or why dancing in gay clubs attracted me. I could say it was the better music and that would be true. But would it be the whole truth? And if not, what other truths are there?

I’m deeply suspicious of sharply dressed male strangers who smile and stare at me, unblinking, longer than they should, and even rough male acquaintances who talk freely about “getting some” from their wives. I’ve released seemingly easy male friendships because the man’s true bullying side took over. I’ve known so many men who have forced themselves on women. I have been married for 40 years and have two daughters. I wonder what my wife and daughters experienced in their single days. 

Not so long ago, my wife told me she needed to confess something. When we had been dating for only a little while, she went out again with an old boyfriend. He wanted to have sex with her and she didn’t want to but relented and then begged him to stop. She said he did, but it took her almost 40 years to tell me this story. Was it the whole truth?

Recently, I’ve found myself extremely attracted to another writer I know, a trans woman much younger than me. She’s gorgeous, and I feel so drawn to her. She once wrote a story about a man who forced himself on her—she wrote as if only the physical part of the “he took me from behind” hurt her. I don’t think this is her whole truth.

I hate that in becoming female, she learned so quickly what we men do to the women, and men, we want. I think she was scarred more by being taken than by the ten-hour surgery she wanted so that she could fulfill her true destiny.

Something died in me when I read her words. And her voice—her tone sounds like the singer from Cigarettes After Sex, just with an accent.

Today I was reading a creative essay by a student of mine. I loved her piece about someone she once loved. But in that piece she had to write about someone she formerly loved, a man I’ll never know but whose type I’ve known most of my life. A man who forced himself into her.

It goes on. Men too often force themselves into whomever they can, and I just don’t want anything forced into me, and like the trans woman writer I admire so much, I can’t see myself ever consenting to a man again.

My wife knows all of this. I’ve asked her if I might be queer, and she’s asked me the same thing. We both understand that by many people’s standards, I’m not queer at all, except for the part of me that kissed those men and let one of them touch me. Or the part of me that’s drawn to the masked gay country singer Orville Peck. I do feel desire for him. I think I would let him kiss me if he wanted to, and if I were a single man. The same goes for Julee Cruise if she were still alive, and the former student I’m so attracted to.

My wife has asked me to please tell her if I ever decide that I’m gay or want to be with a man. 

“I’m not attracted to most men,” I tell her. “And I don’t trust them. And besides, it’s you who I love and who I want to make love to.”

So many men declare their independence through their masculinity and heterosexuality. And then they lie and cheat and hurt those they want and those they really don’t want but will take, and those who do or don’t want them, and even those they actually love.

Writing all of this helps even if it doesn’t actually clear my confusion. I would rather write and read about the confusion and pain, though. At least it’s at a distance, and when I tell it “No” it tends to listen to me and stop.

Until I ask it to continue.

I'm a writer by profession and at one point, I looked at how much work I’d done for the content mill I was working at and how little I had been paid. I know this seems like a big leap, but it made me consider the idea of working on an adult chatline.

Originally, I started out on the company’s tarot reader line to make extra money, but found that the cards cluttered my desk, making it impossible to work between calls. I’d heard that adult chatlines were easier because I would be able to work on my writing in between and even during calls, and just tell the caller I was doing whatever they had asked me to do. Most people do housework during their calls. There was no reason I couldn’t work both jobs at once. So I asked if I could switch from the tarot line to the adult chatline.

At first, the new job wasn’t too bad. My calls lasted a few minutes, and there were some longer calls from men who became regulars. Those men seemed to like talking to the same person every time. Some would ask for my personal phone number or express an interest in meeting in person, but that was against the rules, and I didn’t want to meet them, anyway. So I would just say it wasn’t allowed, and sound a bit regretful about it. That was enough to get them to change the topic.

There were certain subjects we weren’t allowed to talk about, too. This included things that would be illegal in real life, or gray areas like fantasies involving schoolgirls or breastmilk. 

I wondered if the man sitting behind me had the same fantasies as the men on the chatline.

Eventually, half of my calls seemed to be things I couldn’t talk about. I would get the same caller who would ask me to join in with “raping his girlfriend.” I never heard anyone else in the background, so I hope it was just a fantasy. Still, it didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t allowed. Another guy would ask me to treat him like a baby and let him drink milk from my breast. While it would have been easy to play along over the phone, it still felt extremely weird.

These were just two of the callers to whom I had to politely explain that these subjects weren’t allowed and give them the opportunity to switch to a more appropriate fantasy. If they didn’t, I would explain I was ending the call, then report them through an online form, logging the time of the call so that managers could work out which caller I was reporting. There were never any responses to these reports; I just hoped those callers would be blocked.

There were some things I could work around, like when men wanted to hear me urinate. I would have a jug filled with water in the bathroom. I would take the phone in there and let them listen to me slowly pouring the water into the toilet, letting them believe I was doing as they had asked. I just couldn’t bring myself to help them fantasize about rape or other violent or underage acts.

Working on the phone line made me more wary of the men I passed in my everyday life. When I was walking home from the bus stop after an evening out, or even just sitting on the bus in the daytime, I wondered if the man walking on the other side of the road or sitting behind me had the same thoughts and fantasies as the men on the chatline. I got dozens of inappropriate calls from men, and some of these men had to be someone’s partner or family member. They spent their days doing all the usual things that everyone else did. I’d always been careful before, and would have described myself as sensibly cautious. I didn’t jump to the conclusion that every man was a predator, just because he was a man. I knew that often you can’t tell until it’s too late. 

The same men I reported kept calling, so it was clear that the managers didn’t want to block them. I got several warnings for hanging up, even when I explained to the callers first. I knew I was close to getting thrown off the line, and it felt like there was an unspoken message to just go along with whatever the men wanted to talk about, despite the official rules, which just seemed to be there for show.

I figured some men were acting out their fantasies and would be satisfied with just talking. By having a place to talk about these things, they wouldn’t need to act them out. However, I guessed there could also be men who would someday decide that talking wasn’t enough, and they wanted to try these things for real. I didn’t want to do anything to encourage them. I didn’t like to think that some woman might be raped or hurt by a man I had talked to, and I might be partially responsible. (After all, women are great at self-blame, and not so good at placing the blame on the perpetrator, where it belongs.)

I quit the chatline. Although it meant less money, my mental health instantly improved. I hadn’t even realized how the job had affected me mentally. It had cut into my sleep, made me miserable during the day, and made me more distrustful of strangers than was healthy. Instead, I focused my time on more positive activities to improve my finances and worked harder than ever. Investing time in my own professional future was better than the alternative of working on the adult chatline.

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

My friend and I have a yearly tradition of taking a short trip to Barcelona in the summer. We usually stay on the beach for the whole day, and then occasionally go for food. Our 2022 trip coincided with my 24th birthday. This particular day, a bunch of guys had come up to us on the beach, trying to get our numbers and flirt. We said "no" to all of them. But towards the end of the day, a really tall German guy covered in tattoos came over to us. My friend is from Switzerland and speaks German, so we got to talking and ended up going to dinner with him and his friend. 

The guy’s friend left after dinner, and suddenly there were three of us. The conversation started to get flirty. My friend had a guy she was dating at the time, so she was a bit more reserved, but I was fresh off of a breakup. I really fancied him, but there was a language barrier—I’m from Bulgaria and only speak a little bit of German—so my friend was acting as the translator. At one point he suggested, "Why don't we all go to the beach together and welcome your birthday?” I remember having some hesitation about it. When we stopped to drop off our stuff at the hostel, I considered just telling them I was going to bed. But they were very persuasive and said I should try to celebrate my 24th birthday. 

We went to the main beach where the clubs are in Barcelona. There are a lot of tourists and it’s well-lit—a lot of police hanging around. We were sitting on the beach having some beers, and I don’t know quite how it happened, but we just sort of started making out, all three of us. Just before three in the morning, we walked to the other beach beyond the pier that's a bit more secluded. My friend went skinny-dipping while I was with the German guy, kissing and doing all sorts of things. Later, she got involved, too—we were basically having a threesome at this point. But then we turn to one side and we see that some guy is not too far from us. We decided to move even further down the beach. 

I couldn’t stop putting myself in the victim’s shoes and imagining how scared she must have been.

Twenty minutes after we moved, I spotted the same guy about 50 to 100 meters away from us. And he’s lying on the beach masturbating. At first I found it funny; I didn’t feel scared because I wasn’t alone. I tried to make a joke out of it with my friends, like, “I don’t mean to interrupt what you’re doing, but this guy is having a wank looking at us.” Eventually the guy realized we saw him, and he pulled his shorts up and left. I didn’t think much of it.

Shortly after that, I remember turning and seeing some sort of wrestling going on. I had a really odd feeling like something was wrong. I immediately screamed at the German guy to come and run with me. I don't think my friend realized what was going on because she didn't come until later. I started sprinting towards them, wearing the German guy’s t-shirt, no underwear. The closer I get to the wrestling people, the more I realized what was actually going on. I could see that the same guy that was having a wank was now attacking a girl in a white dress.

The German guy ran towards him and knocked him with his knee in his head, trying to get the attacker off the girl. He pinned the attacker down, trying not to beat him up. I could see my friend in the distance walking, so confused because she didn't realize what was going on. And the girl: I've never seen anyone so panicked in my life. She was just completely in shock, crying, almost screaming. She kept asking for a cigarette.

My friend called the police, but they were having a difficult time finding us on beach. While we waited, I couldn’t stop putting myself in the victim’s shoes and imagining how scared she must have been. I think that’s my most prominent memory of that night. She tells us she's staying with a friend of hers who’s living in Barcelona, so we call that friend and ask her to come help, since she speaks Spanish. 

The police arrive and were very helpful, especially one lady. They were trying to look for signs of her attack. Her knees were bruised. Her arms were bruised. Two policemen took the guy, put him in the back of their car, and left him there for a little bit. The girl's friend arrived and told her, “What did you expect was going to happen if you come here on your own?” She blamed her friend for being attacked. My friend and I were so shocked to see how cold this woman was, not even giving her friend a hug or trying to reassure her or calm her down. 

Eventually the police put the German guy, the girl that got attacked, and her friend who could translate in the back of their car. They told me and my friend that we had to go back on our own. Are you kidding us? It was the worst place to leave two girls on their own now. 

Luckily, our hostel wasn't too far—maybe about a 15-minute walk. I was walking and shivering, filled with adrenaline, not being able to comprehend what just happened. We got back to the hostel at five in the morning. I called my mom and started crying. She was supportive and said, “I think you should go and try and get some sleep.” I remember lying in bed for what felt like hours, and every time I closed my eyes, the imagery of the attack came up. 

I got in touch with my therapist the next day and she was able to do a little bit of a crisis intervention. Then the three of us met the next day for dinner. Because it was my birthday, they took me out for for a meal. It was a bit of a surreal connection that I've rarely felt in my life. It was almost beyond words—just the experience of sharing something so intense and being able to coordinate our efforts to get through it. It felt like we beat evil together. After dinner we rented a boat, and it was probably one of the most beautiful experiences I've had on a holiday. It was a nice way to wrap up bonding together before each of us was headed our own way. 

When I was thirteen, I cut off all my hair. The official inspiration to anyone that asked was the model Agyness Dean, but she was not the only source of fascination. I also had a private inspiration for the haircut: My friend had just made a similarly drastic maneuver and I was obsessed with her pixie cut. The blunt edges framed her soft face, making any glance at her a beautiful dance between the masculine and feminine.

At this young age, I wasn’t aware that my obsession could have been a crush. Like many young queers, I confused my desire for her for what we saw played out in high school dramas on films and TV. In movies like Mean Girls, the rivalry between girls was often explained away as a competition for male attention, rather than the romantic tension it might have been. So it never crossed my mind that I wanted to be with this friend; instead I thought I simply wanted to be her.

Turning up to school with a new haircut always felt like a moment from the movies. I fantasized that heads would turn as I walked down the corridor, a sea of bodies parting for the new and improved me. My dad had told me the new cut was chic, that I looked like Jean Seberg, so I was sure my peers would treat me with the reverence worthy of a Hollywood star. But the judgment of my peers would hold much greater value than the parental praise that had sent me forth that day. I wasn’t met with awe or praise but silence.

One girl reassuringly rubbed my shoulder and commended me for my bravery. I was confused; I didn’t think this would be considered a courageous act. Maybe I had selective amnesia about the reactions I got in elementary school when I’d had a similarly short hairdo. Parents and children alike would refer to me as a boy. Back then, short hair allowed people to presume my gender. This time, in high school, it allowed them to presume my sexuality.

I've spent 16 years hiding behind my long hair, safe (and bored) in the crutch of compulsory heterosexuality.

It wasn’t long before my teenage peers had issued me with a new nickname: Lezzley. For those readers who didn’t live through the aughts, this may not sound like an insult so much as a descriptor. But at a time when being called “gay” was a commonly used insult, having my sexuality decided for me and then used as my defining feature was an experience that defined my gender and sexual expression for a long time.

At the time, I was exploring my sexuality with everyone—kisses were shared with other girls at private sleepovers just as much as they were with boys at parties. But this new nickname, along with the underlying homophobia by fellow peers, made me cautious about my chosen expression. To detract from the butch vibe I was giving off with this shortcut, I devoutly applied make up every morning before school. It was as if to say, “Don’t worry, I’m still a girl. I still like girly things and, most importantly, I like boys.”

It was around this time that the school's sexual hierarchy really became apparent. Holding hands with a boy or a girl sparked whispers through the school, but the way same-sex romance was mocked undermined these relationships for years to come. The desire to fit in was subconsciously seeping into my sense of self. And it wasn’t just my pre-school routine that changed but my after-hours one. It was clear that having a boyfriend was paramount to one’s social standing, while having a girlfriend was not. Romance with the same sex was funny, or a spectacle reserved for the house party; it did not hold the reverence that a straight pairing did. And so my queer antics became private sleepover experiences that never got the public declarations my straight relationships did.

Since then I've spent 16 years hiding behind my long hair, safe (and bored) in the crutch of compulsory heterosexuality. In recent years, however, I have been trying to reunite with the teen girl who wasn't afraid to make bold aesthetic choices and kiss girls. I have opened up my dating app preferences, I’m heading to queer nights out with fellow bi friends, and I finally cut my hair off.

In losing more than six inches of hair, I’ve put myself right back in that vulnerable place. For the first week after the cut, I felt as if I’d left something of myself on the salon floor. As if the inches that had been swept up by the hairdresser had taken away my femininity and therefore my sense of value in heterosexual society. I realized I no longer had my hair to hide behind.

But I’m not the insecure teenage girl that needed that validation in order to survive high school, nor am I surrounded by people who decided my value, my gender, or my sexuality by my hair. In fact, I’ve noticed a significant uptick on double takes and flirtatious smiles from fellow queer people, and I’m relishing the way my hair now signals my sexuality. It’s no longer the cross I must bear, but the lightweight flick of my short hair that tells the community I’m one of you.

Getting bullied for my appearance may have forced me back into the closet, but today I’m embracing how I can signal my identity through my aesthetic choices. Returning to a shorter cut has made me realize that I don’t need to decide between presenting in a feminine or masculine way. Both can exist in harmony, giving my bisexual teen self the peace of my mind she deserves. Cutting my hair is bringing me back to a part of me that's been dormant for too long. And next time I go back to the hairdresser, I’m getting it cut even shorter.

“This site is the flagship of Europe—that’s what makes it so special,” the lovely HR lady tells me on my first day of being a hostess at a Michelin-starred restaurant in a historic five-star hotel. I’m wearing loafers that are too big for me while passing by men in uniforms, and women in heels that click on tiles. 

I’m drowning under the anxiety of a new job, but I don’t tell anyone. Instead, I focus on the end result: an extra £15,000 a year, free meals on shift, uniforms washed for me. It means I can go on holiday and not worry about expenses, that I can move in with my partner to a nice area, that I can send money to my grandparents abroad who are in dire need of it. 

I put my uniform on, and it’s of a length and a color that wouldn’t flatter anyone. I haven’t shaved my legs, so I want to keep my socks on, but I’m told that’s not how the rest wear it, so I wear these loafers without support. 

When I’m behind the desk, and I’m introduced to my supervisor, she says, “Your shoes aren’t appropriate. Don’t get me wrong! They’re nice. They’re just too chunky.”

I don’t have the heart to tell her I spent £70 on them. So I say to myself, It’s fine! They barely fit, anyway! Move on with your day. I buy a second pair at the end of my first week, ballerina flats with no support. 

I spend my first month shadowing a brunette, trying to pick up everything as fast as possible. I try to learn everyone’s names, even the colleagues that barely make eye contact with me. I keep my head up, and after my shift I soak my feet in boiling water to soothe the pain of standing for eight hours a day.

It’s a choice between being able to barely afford things and preserving my mental health.

I’m alone on my shift for days during my third week, one of the busiest of the year. I wake up at 4:30am to haggle with oil men for their phone numbers, their room numbers, and the reserved tables they’re holding hostage. Because when you’re paying thousands a night, you’ve earned the right to sit wherever you like, right? 

“We don’t say ‘no’ to the guest,” a manager tells me on the phone. “If there’s no space, you make it. You offer something else. You never say no.”

I am scheduled for eight days in a row. The restaurant gets a shiny new red plaque with a Michelin star to brag about. 

“Aren’t you so proud to work here?” guests ask me, and I lie through my teeth. 

“Oh yes, it’s been such a privilege.”

My second month, I’m micromanaged from seven different mouths. I’m looked at like I’m a double-headed stag when I make decisions on my own. I can’t say no, but I have to steer, and manipulate, until I either get the desired result (e.g. someone sitting at a table instead of the counter, fitting a reservation into a fixed one-and-a-half hour slot), or someone makes sure I know I need to do better. I’m on for nine days in a row this time. 

I speak to HR about my struggles, and to the only manager who treats me like a human. He tells me to follow the chain of command, and to shut off the outside noise. He’s right. And I wish it was that simple, but on my seventh day of standing for hours, nothing is. I see a girl crying in the bathroom, and she tells me a story I know too well of a pesky colleague with a smart mouth. 

“My dad just told me something,” my boyfriend says. I’m staying with him on my two days off, and pain throbs in my feet. “He says you don’t seem to be enjoying your job.”

I don’t face it. This is supposed to be it. This is supposed to mean financial stability. Renting an apartment, going out for nice meals, saving up for emergencies. This meant showing I could do it. 

I say, “Well, I don’t love it — but it’s a job, right? No one loves work.”

Eyes speak louder than mouths; directors and managers watch my every move. Waiters watch me struggle, and in passing, they squeeze my shoulder or offer me a smile for comfort. I tell my mom over voice note, “I wish a car would run me over right now so I didn’t have to go to work.” She tells me to quit. That it isn’t worth it. My boyfriend encourages me to apply to other jobs. He also tells me it isn’t worth it.

When my pay comes, I’m so angry I cry. My salary package, composed of a base salary, service charge, and tips, is £500 short of what I was expecting. I ask for an explanation, and HR sugarcoats the fact that we simply aren’t making enough money right now. “But when the year ends, it’ll all be there!” A 12.5% tip added to every bill made up an essential portion of our pay, but our guest number had been low for weeks — a fact the hiring manager had neglected to mention. 

Three months in, my grandfather dies. I apply to jobs to distract myself from the pain, but no one will hire someone who has been at their job for just a few months and wants to leave. I take a week off, and upon my return, my boss asks me why I’m not as perky as I usually am. I almost laugh in his face. 

It’s the end of the quarter. They no longer serve breakfast for the staff. Corporate is in and out most days, and the air is so thick with pressure no one can breathe. On the canteen, there’s a link to the staff survey, and managers have meetings with their teams to get ahead of the damage. Above the clock-in machine, there’s a poster for a mental health service sponsored by the company. 

We sit around a table listening to our boss talk about scones, and this man loves the sound of his own voice more than he loves the job. He says that we can’t hire more people because we don’t have the cash flow, and if anyone leaves, we won’t replace them. We retort with reminding them of the pressure they’re putting us under. Our director tells us everyone is under pressure, while my boss is looking at girls in bikinis on Instagram. 

It’s a funny choice to make, between being able to barely afford things and preserving one’s own mental health. I choose the risk of saying a name wrong, not recognizing someone, cracking a joke at the wrong place, wrong time; or following one manager’s orders, and getting punished by another one. I feel I have to apologize for even breathing in the wrong direction.

I attempt to sign up for therapy, and the company service tells me my work-related stress is too severe for them to treat it. The skin under my feet shed, I dream of work five nights out of seven, and I beg to any merciful God out there that I fail my trial period at this job. At least then I would’ve done everything I could. 

The flagship of Europe burns, and I burn out along with it.

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

I met my now-wife Susanna at a bar in New York. Within five minutes, we were making out. We went on a date the next day, where I learned she was from Sweden. Then she disappeared for months. After that we dated longterm, off and on. I was running a remote business, so I could very easily live all over the world. We moved to Laos together, and then back to Brooklyn, and then it was Sweden’s turn.

I moved to live with Susanna at the end of 2019. We were already pregnant with our first child, and we planned to have the baby in Sweden. There was no way we were going to have the baby in America, not only because this was her hometown and she has her family, but also because it’s one of the best places to be if you have young kids. Not to mention actually having the baby. The delivery room is insanely nice, like bigger than a New York City apartment. After birth, you stay in what they call the “baby hotel” as long as you want. I don't even think you could pay for a private hospital in the United States and get the same quality.

For Susanna’s first birth, we were sorta stuck in an American mindset—which was “avoid the hospital for as long as possible.” We wanted the doula to come to our apartment rather than meet us at the hospital. We didn’t understand that the hospital was a nice place to be. We waited so long that when we finally got to the hospital, Susanna gave birth 15 minutes after she got there. 

After the baby is born, you get 480 days parental leave, and you can split that between the partners. You can even assign some of those days to family members or other caregivers. They pay your salary up to $4,000 a month, and then after that, a lot of employers will top you off so it meets your original salary. Your position at work is reserved for you. And then they start preschool at age one, for about $100 a month. For the first 12 years of being a parent, you have the right to reduce your working hours. Susanna is going back to work next week, after having our second baby, and she's only going to do four days a week.

The Swedish government basically gives you no excuse to not spend time with your kids.

A lot of people may know all these stats from Ezra Klein’s podcast or whatever, but what people really should understand is that you're very much encouraged to take these benefits. You’re looked down upon if you don't take parental leave.

It's so much less stressful this way. It might feel like you’re missing out on your career, but you make up for it by having the time and the space to be with your family. When I go back to visit New York, I get really stressed, actually—and I grew up there. I don't know how people even travel with kids in New York; a stroller on the subway sounds like a nightmare. There are elevators in some stations, but not all, and they smell like pee. Everything in Sweden is built for kids. Every subway has an elevator, so that you can take your stroller on it. 

For my first baby I didn’t take paternity leave. (Don’t tell any of my coworkers—they might look down on me!) It’s only because we were stuck in the house during COVID doing nothing. I shut down my business during that time, and even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten paid by the government if I worked for myself at a U.S.-based company. But you can keep some of the parental leave days you don’t use for later. I definitely plan on using them at some point.

I’m actually on paternity leave right now for our second baby. It’s a lot of parenting time, but you just sort of resign yourself. The Swedish government has created so many spaces for you here, and they've taken away other things you need to do. They're giving you places to meet other parents and spaces where kids can run around and play with toys and sing. They’ve removed your other obligations. They basically give you no excuse to not spend time with your kids.

Parenting and the attitudes towards kids seem really different in Sweden. You can kind of expect the average person here to be much better with kids, and parents here are so calm. At the park the other day, this kid was trying to push some other kids on the swings and was a little too aggressive. One of the girls’ dads was there and was just so gentle; he treated the aggressive kid as if it was his own child. He just said, “You have to ask first,” without getting protective over his own kid. In general, in Scandinavia, they’re big on more dangerous play. They let the kids climb the trees and if they fall, they don’t run over and smother their kids. I notice a lot of the parents here love cozy family time. These people are obsessed with kids, and they’re also obsessed with cozy time (that’s what hygge means).

I never wanted to have kids, but now I can’t imagine not being a dad to my two daughters. I think I’m really good at it—I’m extremely patient with them, which could be something made possible in Sweden and less possible in America unless you’re super-rich. If I’m walking down the street with them and they’re going slow or in different directions, it doesn’t matter. I let them explore and try not to interrupt them. I mean, they annoy me a lot, and parents who say they love their kids 100 percent of the time are crazy. But being a dad is the best thing ever.

I’ve experienced my fair share of breakups throughout my life. I just never thought one would happen with my mom.

About a month ago, my mom decided to assert boundaries for the first time in our lives. During a three-minute phone call, she announced she would be “taking a break” from me, my three brothers, and her boyfriend for the foreseeable future. In other words, she would cut off all communication with everyone.

It devastated me. I was personally hurt, scared for her, and concerned that my mom might be hiding something terrible from us, like a terminal diagnosis. Later, I realized she was learning — and asserting — a lesson I have been trying to teach myself for the past two years.

From what I can tell, it started when my mom said she wanted to get an apartment with her boyfriend and me. I said “no” because I already had my own apartment with my boyfriend and didn’t want to feel like a child living with a parent again. It wasn’t a mean-spirited or even personal rejection.

She called me back the next day and said I was “yet another child who abandoned her.” I think she meant that my younger brothers abandoned her by going to college. Mom said she didn’t want to speak to me anymore and that her break from her kids would last until she felt like getting back in contact with us.

I was so shocked, I didn’t do anything other than agree. I respected her wish and eventually I put it in bigger perspective when I brought it up with my therapist.

My mom’s parenting style most closely resembles enmeshment, which means she consistently overstepped parent-child relationship boundaries. When my brothers and I were growing up, she unknowingly wanted us to treat her like a child — even while we were really young. I didn’t realize that was something other parents did until I started therapy. I needed help coping with the emotional trauma created by having to parent my own mom, which helped me learn that parental infantilization happens in other families, too.

Before this phone call, she’d never set a single boundary with us before.

Whatever stage of life we were in, my mom wanted to experience it with us. If we wanted to draw in our coloring books, we knew she had to get our good markers or she’d get upset. Mom had to be the center of attention when we played games and needed us to cater to her emotions instead of addressing ours. That meant we had no boundaries as individuals. My mom needed us to feel happy, leading to her request for us to live with her when my brothers and I were well into adulthood.

Setting boundaries is one of the best ways to fix that. Before this phone call, she’d never set a single boundary with us before. Taking a break was a bit extreme, but I couldn’t take it personally because I saw how she was finally learning to be her own person. 

Not that she would explain her decision that way, exactly; she reacted to us denying her request with an adult temper tantrum. In the past, that kind of reaction sent us running to her side because she wouldn’t calm down until we reversed our decision. Since we haven’t done that, everyone’s gained the space to breathe on our own. 

I think what she’s doing will help her in the long run. Now that my mom’s setting boundaries, we’re all going to have the chance to develop healthy coping mechanisms regarding her absence. Even though it hurts to see her taking a break from us, I believe it will ultimately help our parent-child relationships if we all use this time to grow individually. Sometimes, we have to detach our personal feelings from a situation so we can turn things around with toxic family members. Emotionally, I’m not used to the pain of being cut off from someone who taught me that enmeshment means love. But logically, I trust that this will be good for my family. 

Part of what I'm trying to do in therapy is undo the trauma of having to prioritize my mom’s needs while ignoring my own. Sometimes, that means going to therapy while feeling triggered. I’ll feel anxious because I haven’t made my mom feel better yet, which floods me with panic. Instead of ignoring it all by getting busy, I breathe slowly and ask what each feeling is trying to tell me. I remember that I’m not responsible for my mom’s emotional wellbeing. By letting her take a break, I’m helping our relationship change into something that’s healthier for both of us, even if I don’t know what that looks like yet.

And you know what? I’m also learning that it’s okay if I can’t work through my panic. My nervous system learned to only feel safe with something if my mom was okay with it.

My mom, meanwhile, has never seen a therapist, which also makes it a bit easier to accept her extreme decision. I think when my mom is ready to talk to me again, we’ll have more open communication.

I used to think leaving toxic family members was easy, but then my mom left us. I didn’t realize how much emotional work I’d need to do afterward. I journal every day to check in with the emotions that feel most present for me. I ask what those emotions are trying to tell me so I understand what my brain or body needs. I’m also practicing compassion daily. This experience has been emotionally hard on me. I try to remember that my mom and my brothers are likely struggling with similar hardships.

My schedule used to revolve around visiting Mom every week, waiting for her daily phone calls and checking in on her to make myself feel safe in our relationship. Now, I’m filling that free time with healing activities like resting or experimenting with new hobbies.

Every day, I remember that even if this lasts forever, my mom’s break is a gift. My mom, my brothers and I get to explore how much better life can be with boundaries. Her strong reaction is teaching us some big lessons, which we wouldn’t have learned if we never tried setting those boundaries.

I still vividly remember everything from the night I was attacked and outed—I was helpless and thought I would die.

I met Emmy on Tinder in late April. We talked and agreed to meet and hook up. On the day we had plans, I got on a video call with him to confirm that he was real. For many queer people in Nigeria, this was a way of being safe—but obviously not safe enough. Although I had my doubts, and something kept telling me to cancel the encounter, I dismissed the thought. 

The attack happened in a dingy cheap hotel. I had stripped down to only my trousers and was striking up little conversations with Emmy when I heard a knock and a stranger came into the room. At that point, I knew something was up and began panicking. Emmy’s friendly demeanor changed, and I tried to call for help. What followed was a series of verbal and physical assaults. I was dragged out of the hotel and was soon met with a homophobic mob. I was made to call my family, reveal my sexual orientation, and also ask them for money.

I was born in Nigeria, and have lived there for all my 25 years. Here, being queer is considered abnormal, evil, and Western. Especially after the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act became law in 2014, choosing to be an openly queer person is dangerous. At any given moment, you could get harassed, attacked, and even killed. On dating apps like Tinder and Grindr, people posing as gay men lure potential hook-ups to harass, attack, blackmail, extort, and out them. This act is called “kito” or to be “kitoed.”

Before my attack—a year ago this month—I was not totally in the closet. I grew up looking quite effeminate and came out to a few of my close friends almost immediately after high school. As the years passed, I embraced my sexuality and I had no shame in who I was.

All queer people in Nigeria are bonded with the same trauma—of not being accepted, of assault or the threat of it.

However, I wasn’t open with my immediate family before my attack, and getting outed to them upended my life. In the first three months after the attack, while seeing a therapist with the help of an NGO, I detached myself from the house that I shared with them. A house that was once a comfort zone became not-so-comfortable. My family would regularly use homophobic rhetoric. My mental health after the attack didn’t matter to them. They were also considering conversion therapy. This was very scary for me; I had heard about people’s experiences with such therapy, and it was horrible.

Every opportunity I had to stay away from my family's abode, I took it. I hung out at a friend’s place for weeks, which turned into months. I spoke to my mother on the phone once in a while; half of the time she was the one who initiated the call and was very quick to try to persuade me to come back home. In response, I’d promise her I would, as a way to get her off my back. But the truth was, I was still very traumatized—from my attack, but also from how my family condemned me afterwards. I wasn’t able to look past how homophobic they were and continued to be.

Meanwhile, I took a break from meeting people on social media and dating apps. I channeled all my energy into moving past my attack, trying to work, and earning more money. Life could have been fuller and more interesting. But instead, it was very lonely and I yearned for more. There were days when I wanted to get back on dating apps, just to feel the thrill of meeting new people, but I hesitated. It didn’t feel safe. 

In September, I started talking to an old Twitter friend. We began flirting and it turned out I felt safe around this person. He was young, sweet, and good-looking. What was meant to be another harmless hook-up became something more. I spent a lot of time with this person and around their chosen family. This community became a safe space for me. Meeting my now-boyfriend opened me up to new adventures. We went on road trips, took walks together, and even went on dates.

Gradually I was healing from my trauma. All queer people in Nigeria are bonded with the same trauma—of not being accepted, of assault or the threat of it. My attack wasn’t the first where I live, nor was it the last. A close acquaintance of mine recently met someone on Grindr and agreed to meet up—only to be held captive, blackmailed, and extorted. The night of the incident, I relived my own experience and knew it was a cycle that wasn’t ending anytime soon. 

The dynamics within my family are still strained, and my relationships with them have never been the same. For instance, I got along with a half-sibling very well before I got outed, but our relationship went sour immediately after my attack. They took some drastic homophobic actions, like calling my friends and harassing them about my sexuality, and throwing away some of my possessions. In an African home like mine, your older siblings must be respected; calling them out for their wrongs is seen as a way of being disrespectful and uncouth. So now, this person and I only exchange pleasantries and nothing more.

With my mother, things have been looking good—her calls no longer give me anxiety like they used to, and conversations these days are better. I don’t think she’s accepting of my sexuality yet, but overall things are much better compared to the early stage of my kito experience.

Looking back and reflecting on my attack, I believe the whole thing made me strong and resilient and opened me to the chance of finding love—even amidst homophobia, toxic heteronormativity, rejection, crackdown, and condemnation. As an openly queer person who is a constant target of homophobia, you have two options. One is to keep running and changing home addresses, or flee the country. The latter is a huge step that requires connections and a certain level of financial independence. Nigeria is one of the poorest countries in the world riddled with economic instability. And as a marginalized person, it is even more difficult.

The other option is staying and trying to survive. For now, that’s what I’m choosing. I do not know what the future holds for me, but I want peace and freedom. I want to be able to hold my partner’s hand and kiss them in public without fear of getting assaulted. I know in the back of my mind that full liberation might never be achieved in Nigeria, so I am just left with hope that I make it out alive in the end.

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

My first job was not in an office, and it was for minimum pay. I was making Є17,000 or Є18,000 a year. I did that for about a year or two, and then I moved on to my first office job, which is essentially doing what my employees do now. I was one of the first 30 employees at that company, so I got a promotion in less than a year.

Everyone I started with is now some sort of manager, because we all had the most experience and kept moving up. I got another promotion, then I got head-hunted by another company that was starting a new branch in my city, and started as a middle manager there. I was the youngest manager in the company’s history. Eventually I moved on from there, and I’ve been in my current management role for three years.

I’m now in my early thirties, and I know that very little of my success is me being so great—it’s almost purely happenstance. I'm that classic case of having "failed upwards" throughout my career. Sometimes I think about the fact that I was always the one getting my hands dirty, doing the work, and now I'm just managing managers. Even the people directly below me aren't doing the actual work itself. I basically sit around reading Reddit and browsing the internet. I sit around in meetings with shareholders and board members and report on the work my staff do, and get congratulated on it as if I had anything to do with it.

I feel like a bit of a fraud: I have no marketable skills, my degree is a useless arts degree, and my career is all based on just sticking around until my bosses are like “Well, I guess we should promote this guy, he has x years of experience.” I know I’m just not working as hard as I'm being paid for and it does make me feel a lot of guilt. 

I even asked when I first got hired at my current job, “Will I be able to help out with any of the work?” And the CEO said, “There’s no point. That's not your job. Your job is to make sure they're doing the work.” That felt icky. I didn't like that. But I’ve stayed because they're paying me well, maybe the top 10% of salaries in my country, and it's an easy gig. I would have to be a fool to turn it down. 

I haven't told anyone how I feel, because what are they going to say? Don't look a gifthorse in the mouth? Or, I wish I had that gig. Or, You’re so lucky. And this is not a situation where I’ve gotten lost in the corporate structure and nobody notices I’m not doing work. I’m fulfilling the job description which is probably broad like, “willing to run a team, willing to be part of a dynamic workforce.” It feels wrong for me to be telling people to work and then sitting back and being like, “Well, my job is done.” I know this is generally how it works—work hard in your twenties so you don’t have to work as hard as a manager—but it feels unfair. It feels like a topsy turvy system. 

I’ve always had an answer in case anyone asked why I wasn’t in a relationship. In my early 20s, I didn’t even want one. Later, I would tell my friends that I didn’t need to be in a relationship to define me. I always figured I would eventually get into one at the right time, when I met the person I wanted to be with either for a long enough time or forever. I thought that time would be before I turned 30. However, as I crossed that threshold, I could no longer pretend that my lack of a partner didn’t bother me. It’s something I’ve wanted for a few years now, but it always seems to evade me.

I didn’t grow up in a deeply religious family that discouraged pre-marital sex and dating, if that’s what you’re wondering. When I was younger, we did go to church as a family every Sunday. But by around age 11, I confidently declared to my parents that I would no longer be attending church, and they were ok with it. Looking back, that period coincided with a lot of changes I went through that completely changed my way of being.

I was a young preteen girl when my first crush died. In an instant, my carefree life was permanently traded for one surrounded by immense grief. I hadn’t thought of death that much before, yet now it was constantly on my mind. I didn’t think I’d be so affected by his demise; after all, we had barely spoken full sentences to each other. However, after his death, I was overcome by feelings of sadness. I also felt extremely lonely because I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, especially not with my parents, who had raised us to bury our feelings and focus on our grades. 

I developed unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with my grief. I became terrified of the world and its uncertainty. People were not permanent, I realized. They could leave you either voluntarily or involuntarily at any given moment. I withdrew from family and friends, and subsequently from the hobbies I dearly loved. Nothing felt exciting anymore and in between my bouts of sadness, I became overly fixated on self-preservation and the idea of permanence.

The hours I’ve spent in my fantasy world are probably more than those I’ve spent in real life, with real people.

I searched for this feeling of comfort and surety and occasionally found it in food, but mostly in my dreams. When I slept, I dreamt of the good old days before the accident that took my crush away. In those dreams, I was back at a place where I was a happy-go-lucky girl; where my crush was still alive; where life and its possibilities seemed endless; where I controlled everything. 

The funny thing about dreams, though, is that they are a reflection of your reality. And eventually his death pervaded even my perfect fantasy world. At this point, I think my brain was trying to let go of the grief that had engulfed me for so long. Unfortunately, by then I had become addicted to the comfort and security that came from my fantasy world. In order to cling to it, I started subconsciously creating fictional characters that reflected what I wanted my reality to look like in terms of a spouse and a relationship.  

I accidentally discovered I was addicted to unhealthy fantasies – or maladaptive daydreaming – while in therapy to address my dissatisfaction with my life. According to Harvard Medical School, “maladaptive daydreaming occurs when a person engages in prolonged bouts of daydreaming, often for hours at a time, to cope with a problem.” It can be a response to trauma, as it is in my case. Unlike hallucinations, I am fully aware of the fact that these daydreams are a fantasy and not real life. Initially, my fantasies began as dreams while I was asleep, but they eventually started taking place when I was also awake and going through the day, especially during times when I couldn’t cope with the overwhelming feelings of grief and sadness. 

During those times, my brain actively brought the fantasies from my dreams into my conscious mind, which would help calm me down. Each time I conjured the daydreams, they would get more complex and involve us talking and going on dates. Eventually, these fantasies became subconscious and very hard to control, persistently popping into my mind. Even after I had gotten over my crush and his demise, these fantasies carried on and evolved to include new partners, a new family, a new perfect life that was removed from my reality. 

At the time I learned about maladaptive daydreaming, I was aware of my fantasies, but I hadn’t taken stock of how much they had permeated all aspects of my life. I have fled dates that weren’t going great in order to rush home and retreat to my fantasy life, where I already have a spouse and don’t have to go through the tiring dating stage. These real-life dating experiences have never been enjoyable to me because they could never match up to my fantasies. I chased after the thrill and excitement that I derived from my daydreams, but the reality felt crushingly disappointing. My dates always felt mundane; the men always felt unworthy of my time. 

I cannot count the hours of my life that I’ve spent in my fantasy world. They’re probably more than those I’ve spent in real life, with real people. Besides romantic relationships, my fantasies occasionally involve me living out a life where I am more financially stable, or have more friends and live a more adventurous life. My fantasies started out as a coping mechanism to a traumatic experience, but they quickly took over my life to a point where instead of putting in the hard work to create meaningful experiences, I resorted to just imagining that I already had them.

Discovering and unpacking my trauma and subsequent daydreams has been overwhelming and scary. I have been forced to confront the fact that I’ve lost a lot of time not living in the real world. Sometimes this realization is quite depressing, and during those times it is very tempting to just retreat to my fantasy world. I often do, but not for long periods of time like I used to. I can sense that I am ready to heal, because day by day my fantasy world seems less enticing. I crave and seek out real-life experiences more, even though sometimes I feel alienated from this human experience. But I continue to fight and work on opening myself up to new possibilities, friendships, and romantic relationships.

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

I was 26 and in between jobs when I saw a Facebook post for data entry. It looked kind of scammy, because they were looking for people to work from home, and that wasn’t very common back then—seven years ago, at this point. They told me it was a night shift position in data entry, where they would send an order via email and the worker would input that information to prepare a shipment. The salary paid a little less than $1,000 a week.

The first week, it was exciting because I was learning the ropes. By week three I was like, I cannot believe this is going to be my job. It was so dumb. I was bored out of my mind. It was basically a copy-and-paste job. There were some decisions I needed to make: container sizes, time zones, who will be receiving the shipment. But all that information was in the original email detailing the order. 

It seemed so obvious to me that this could be automated in some way. I was kind of a geek and could optimize some things, but had no idea how to code myself. Still, I knew what was possible. I called a friend who was a developer and asked him some advice. He told me automation would be feasible. I posted the job I needed, and I got a response from a freelancer in India. At first I gave him small jobs: Can you make this section automatic? Then, two days later: Now I need to add this, now I need to add that. I spent my first two months’ salary paying this guy. It got to a point where, besides the orders of four clients, the system would run automatically. 

Then I kept going: I hit up another developer for those four things I still could not do. I was still in the new testing phase for that script when, one night, I fell asleep. I woke up in the morning and I was terrified I was going to get found out. But there was only one error and I could easily correct it. I started going to bed, waking up at 4am to make sure there weren’t any errors, and then going back to sleep. I kept tinkering with the script until there weren’t errors anymore. When I reached that level of optimization, at around month six or seven, I just completely forgot about it. 

It was a dream come true—to get paid for doing no work—and I was doing it.

I got a salary raise a year in, because I was beating the living hell out of everyone else, and I never made mistakes. The only mistakes were in the original emails. I never actually talked to my bosses because we had different shifts. But he would send out emails congratulating me. They never suspected—maybe because it’s just so unlikely that someone would do what I did. They offered me a day job, but I told them I was an introvert and preferred the night shift.

I even tried to tell them what I’d done; maybe they’d be impressed, maybe they’d want to buy the code? I don’t know. I reached out to the regional manager. He replied, “Just keep doing what you're doing. We’re too busy right now to meet with you.” I remember feeling insulted, like they were doing something too important to deal with me.

One time a coworker tried to match my quota. I had it set to eight shipments an hour and I switched it to 11 per hour that month. I was switching the rate back and forth, just in case someone suspected anything. During those first couple of years, I was a nervous wreck. If my phone rang, I was like, Oh my God, they got me. The manager wanted to talk to me? Oh my god, they noticed. But no. It was always to compliment me.

I’ll be honest: I felt really smart for what I did. I had this little secret that nobody knew about. It was a dream come true for so many people—to get paid for doing no work—and I was doing it. I was so happy that this was working out, but I couldn’t tell my friends. I couldn’t tell my wife. She would lose her mind and freak out. She’s a very nervous person, and when I told her what I was doing at the very beginning stages, she was like “Did you get approval? Are you sure this freelancer is a trustworthy person?” So I started to just not tell her anything.  

After a couple of years, I went out and got a whole other day job as a Spanish-English interpreter. I remember thinking about quitting my automated job, but I had credit card debt, and I wanted to pay it off. Then my son came, then we needed a new car. So I hung onto the night-shift job. I would still get nervous. I worried they would call my other job and I’d be completely jobless. But I just couldn't bring myself to quit. It was like free money. I would keep that salary in a separate account and try to forget about it, because I didn’t want to become too dependent on it.

Almost six years in, we all got an email saying they needed to share some bad news with us. They’d finally developed new software that would replace the data entry jobs. We were all laid off.

Losing that job was heartbreaking. I had finally gotten past the guilt phase to the I-don’t-give-a-fuck-phase, and it had actually taken a while to get there. I’d finally made peace with what I was doing. Financially it was a big hit, but I was also just losing something that was really fun. When I look back at it, I still giggle.

“Anyone interested in a Seder next week?”

The question was posed casually on a group chat of neighborhood parents. A couple of years before, I’d moved from Brooklyn to a less political, less Jewish town outside of New York City. I’d instantly bonded with these people, mostly because we lived within blocks of each other and had similarly-aged babies. In those crucial early days of parenthood, having a tight-knit community can mean the difference between sanity and soul-crushing despair.

In some ways, there was a lot of intimacy between us. We’d swapped babysitting nights, recs of fun spots around town, and tips on how to soothe hand, foot, and mouth disease (if you know, you know). But in other ways, these people were still mysteries to me. For example: As a Jew who has long called for a free Palestine, I wasn’t quite sure where many of these parent-friends stood on the war in Gaza.

Suddenly, I felt hesitant about attending this Seder. Because, to paraphrase the haggadah, this Passover was different from all other Passovers.

I’m proud of my Jewish identity, but it never had much to do with Israel. My ancestors came here decades before its founding. My family was not religious, but rather “culturally” Jewish. To me, my Jewishness always had more to do with bagels and sour pickles; the Catskills and the Lower East Side; and most importantly a strong sense of social justice and allyship. The elders around me were Bernie Sanders types; they had deep roots in leftist movements and activism.

When it came to Israel, most Jews I knew were ambivalent at best, intensely critical at worst. When I traveled to the country on a Birthright trip in college, the organizers’ insistence that we were the “chosen people” and that Israel was our true home felt strange and icky. I had always been taught that everyone was equally deserving of freedom and happiness. Daily life in Gaza and the West Bank—which I learned more about on that trip—seemed to fly in the face of those values.

A Seder, in its classic form, is basically Zionism the holiday. My easy, breezy friendships were about to get real.

After Birthright, Passover got a little weird. My family had always had a pretty standard Seder; we dutifully read an old-fashioned haggadah with no real discussion of what Israel meant to us or to the world. I felt increasingly uneasy about retelling the story of Jews’ oppression and arrival in the “promised land,” when Israel was currently oppressing another group of people to declare ownership of that same land. At the tail end of my twenties, I started going to Seders that acknowledged this painful irony and called for liberation and peace for all.

Still, I was never deeply involved in Middle East politics. Despite my view that Israel’s policies toward Palestinians were unjust, the broader issue felt complex and inscrutable to me. Mostly I didn’t think about it. That changed after October 7. I was aghast at the deaths and kidnappings wrought by Hamas, but then my thoughts were overtaken by the unthinkable bloodshed, hunger, and destruction in Gaza. The power imbalance and sheer difference in scale erased any previous reluctance to speak my mind. I had a clear-as-day, gut reaction that has only grown stronger as the war destroys more lives: No, no, no. Not in my name. What Israel was doing to Palestinians went against everything I stood for as a Jew and a human.

I talked about Gaza constantly with my more explicitly political friends from the city, and I posted about the situation freely on social media. But it seldom infiltrated in-person reactions with my new pals. Now I was getting invited to a Seder—which, in its classic form, is basically Zionism the holiday. My easy, breezy friendships were about to get incredibly real. (Let’s face it: Jews are intense!)

I was torn about the best course of action. Should I find out the host’s Israel-Palestine politics beforehand, or just go and hope for the best? While supporters of Israel’s military actions made me incredibly angry, I was almost more offended by the idea that a Passover could be conducted apolitically in 2024. 

Eventually, I figured that if I was going to have authentic, meaningful relationships with any of these people, I had to speak from the heart and hope they’d accept me. I had to believe that my friends were generous, curious, and kind. I called up the host—an incredibly sweet woman (I’ll call her Olivia) with whom I aligned on countless issues, from abortion rights to childcare collectives—and explained that I was wondering how the war in Gaza would be handled at the Seder. 

It was a conversation Olivia was not prepared to have. She hadn’t planned to mention the conflict at Passover—though she was mulling a second empty chair representing the hostages and a second serving of bitter herbs on the Seder plate. She told me that for the last six months, she’d been mostly preoccupied with the rise of anti-semitism and the experience of being a Jew in the U.S.

It was a Twilight Zone moment, the kind when you realize that someone who’s similar to you in so many ways had been seeing the world through completely different eyes. I began questioning my life choices: How could you have moved here and made a bunch of friends who don’t hold your same values, who don’t care about politics the way you do, who prioritize their own emotional comfort over those who are gravely, urgently, and unfairly in danger—just because you were a lonely mom and they had babies, too?

I went ahead and explained my perspective. Olivia listened. She didn’t get defensive. When I asked whether there’d be room to discuss our feelings about the war, she was open to the idea. “I’ll have to reflect on all of this,” she said. There were awkward, halting moments, but it was by far the deepest conversation we’d ever had. Her humble tone convinced me that my family should go. Maybe it would be useful and even constructive to venture outside my own bubble. 

A few days later, Seder night arrived. At first, the kid cacophony drowned out any discernible vibes between the parents, which felt like a telling metaphor. Would we even have a quiet moment to discuss any of this, or will we spend the whole night reining in our toddlers? I wondered. But then the kids settled down, and we sat around the table. There was an extra empty chair. There was an extra pile of magenta horseradish on the Seder plate. And then I saw it, right next to the chicken bone: a wedge of watermelon.

Since 1967’s Six-Day War, the watermelon has been a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, and images of them have proliferated on social media in the last few months. When cut open, the fruit exposes the colors of the Palestinian flag—red, black, white, and green. It was enough to help me relax at the table, but Olivia’s Seder went beyond symbols. After the Four Questions, our kid-friendly haggadah included a new, fifth question: “How does Passover feel different this year?”

We all went around and said a few words, some people sticking to personal details like “I’ve never done a Seder with my child before” and others nodding to the political situation in various ways. I said that it felt wrong to center our ancestors’ pain while some of their descendants were inflicting so much, that it’s because of my Jewish identity that I protest violence and war tonight.

It was all very gentle, careful, and often coded. Certainly not the same as, say, the Seder I attended in 2018 that featured the Jewish Voice for Peace haggadah. The sense that these weren’t 100% “my people” still lingered and probably always will. But I felt listened to by my community, and there was a new level of connection between us—one that extended beyond our shared experience as parents.

As I enter my late twenties, I’m attending more and more baby showers. I don’t want children, but I’m happy to celebrate other people who decide to pop one out. And boy, do we celebrate that decision. Gender reveal parties, baby showers, sprinkles, registry lists, wildly expensive itty-bitty pairs of shoes—the list goes on.

Yet while I’m sitting at these parties, watching a grown-ass woman eat fake shit out of a diaper, I can’t help thinking that my decision to not have children isn’t celebrated in the same way. It sounds lovely to have a big ol’ party surrounded by your friends and family, all of them offering words of love and encouragement, telling you that if you drop the ball, they’ll all be there to help you.

So why is this reserved for the parents and aspiring parents among us? If you’re a woman reading this, then you probably already know the kind of responses “I don’t want kids” inspires. However, I’m going to list some of them anyway. Just for fun.

“You’ll change your mind.”

“You’re too young to make that kind of decision.”

“You just haven’t met the right man yet.” (As a queer woman, this is especially gut-wrenching.)

“Who will take care of you when you’re old?”

“That’s selfish.”

What if your granny responded the following way to a woman who does want kids?

“How are you going to afford it?”

“Are you certain your partner is onboard for such a big commitment?”

“Do you think it's a good idea to have a baby now, given the state of the world?”

“What about overpopulation? The climate? The job crisis?”

“That’s selfish.”

A problem with celebrating childlessness is that there’s no precise moment to latch onto. Except, of course, when you get an abortion.

I don’t think any woman should be shamed for decisions she makes about her own body (controversial, I know). Yet lots of women still are.

A problem with trying to celebrate childlessness is that there’s no precise moment to latch onto. Whereas being pregnant is a very specific period of time where you can celebrate the decision to have kids. Except, of course, when you decide to get an abortion.

Having an abortion is a very intentional act (in my experience, a lot more intentional than getting pregnant), when someone can weigh the options and make a firm choice to not have a child. When I was 17, I had an abortion of my own. I felt a vile cocktail of fear, shame, and guilt for choosing to end my pregnancy. Imagine if, instead of stewing in that horrible headspace, I could have been supported—celebrated, even—for my decision.

That moment, when I was sad and largely alone, is when I most needed to hear from the people I love that my choice was valid and not selfish. That it was a decision I was allowed to make. I would’ve given anything to have a supportive gang of people around me, telling me it was going to be okay after I had my abortion. And isn’t that what a baby shower is? Even the crazy consumerist overtones that have warped modern baby showers seem to be a way for people to show love and support—to make sure that parents have all they need to make their child rearing decision a reality.

This is not the level of love and support that women without children receive.

I barely ever bring up my abortion, though I feel like I would be a better feminist if I did. The closest I ever get to these kinds of conversations is saying “I don’t want kids, actually” to elderly relatives at suddenly awkward Christmas dinners.

Both my sister and I have had abortions, and we often joke that we wish we’d gotten each other cards or “congratulations” helium balloons. We were too young and too scared back then to feel anything other than misery and shame.

I like to think that if my sister had one now, I would throw her an abortion shower—if for nothing else, just to see the horror on my grandma’s face.

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe. It is Part Three of a three-part series about people who got diagnosed with autism late in life, a group experts have dubbed “The Lost Generation.” Read Part One here and Part Two here.

I had a rough childhood, so I had this idea that I wanted to be a mother and take better care of my kids. My high school sweetheart and I fell in love and I ended up getting pregnant when I was 17. My mother said, “You are not raising a baby in my house.” So I moved out. My boyfriend and I lived together. I got pregnant again when I was 20 and had my second daughter.

I really, really loved being a mother. It felt like my mission in life. And the earlier stuff was great—I loved being pregnant, my births were easy, and breastfeeding was pretty easy. But later, there were certain things that were super-duper hard for me. At that point I had separated from my daughters’ father and was a single mom. I really struggled with making and keeping medical appointments for my children. I was bad at taking them to playdates and talking to the other parents; I just wanted to drop them off and go. When they would start whining at the same time, I wouldn’t be able to handle it and I’d have a total meltdown. I would be at a recital and really want to watch them and see them perform, but so many people would be there murmuring and talking and I’d want to scream and run.

It was really confusing to me. I’d think, I love my children so much. How can I be so good at listening to them and being on their level and making them feel loved and cooking them food and keeping them nourished—and then be so bad at certain things that are important for them to thrive? I must be a terrible mother.

But the whole time, I was struggling with sensory overwhelm and stress related to autism. And I had no idea.

I was like, “Oh my God, I'm not awful or crazy. My brain is just wired differently.”

From an early age, there were lots of signs that something was different about me. In school, I was a savant at reading and writing. Things were way too easy for me; I was bored and irritated and constantly correcting the teachers. I would get in trouble, and people would just label me as angry and gifted. I also had no idea how to keep friendships. I never fit in anywhere, and I literally ate my lunch in the bathroom. I also got misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 16, so I attributed a lot of my struggles as a mom to “I'm bipolar, and I'm fucked up.” Or I figured things were just harder for me because I was a very young mom.

More than a decade later, when I was first getting to know my wife, I told her, “I need to be open with you about something. I have bipolar disorder.” She got this really skeptical look on her face and said, “No offense, but I don't think you do.” She’d been a social worker for 20 years, and had a lot of experience with people with severe mental illness. I started doing some research on what conditions were commonly misdiagnosed as bipolar. I also started to think about how, when I worked with people with developmental disabilities, I had a particular affinity for people with autism. I would understand their non-verbal communication. I would listen to them go on about their special interests and I wouldn't get bored. It was even a joke among my coworkers that I was the autism whisperer. They’d tease: “Are you sure you're not autistic?”

Eventually I went to my psychiatric provider and got a two-hour assessment. She diagnosed me as having autism spectrum disorder. That was six years ago.

In the short term, I felt a lot of mixed emotions. There was relief: So much made sense in retrospect. I was like, “Oh my God, I'm not awful or crazy. My brain is just wired differently.” But I also had to work through a lot of my own mental constructs around infantilizing people with autism. I mean, where I’m from in Massachusetts, they still say “retard” freely. I was crying to my wife, saying, “You’re never going to have sex with me again.” She was like, “What are you talking about?” I had to really deconstruct a lot of stigma.

Some people close to me didn’t really know how to react to my news. My mother said, "No, I don't think you are,” but she also said that when I came out as gay. My brother didn’t seem too interested. Of course my Gen Z daughters were great about it. They were like, “Congratulations, mom. This is awesome. This is going to really change your life to to have this information and this insight about yourself.”

They were right: I was able to establish a gauge within myself for the things I knew would become too much. Now that I know certain cumulative stimuli is going to fuck me up, I can plan in advance. I can go to the store early or late when there's not a lot of people. I can monitor myself in social situations and really feel okay to leave when I need to leave. I’ve worked with my therapist to have systems and plans and routines.

Two years ago, my oldest daughter got diagnosed, too. My relationship with her completely transformed. We had always been alike, so much that we would trigger each other's issues. We were very close, but we would fight and butt heads. But after we both got diagnosed, we had a common language for what we both experienced and we were able to connect on that. It’s really, really amazing. We send each other autism memes. The other day I texted her how I went to my own birthday dinner and got super-overwhelmed and had to leave—and she was like “Oh my god, I totally feel you.” 

I would not have been able to just leave like that before my diagnosis. I would have sat there at the table until I was literally in tears. I would have been drinking to mask my feeling of overwhelm. Now I don’t drink, and I can model the behavior of removing myself even if it's socially awkward. 

I think back to those early years of being a mother and I wish I had more support. It would have been great to have a social worker to help us keep track of appointments. My youngest really should have had braces, for instance. She asks me now, “Was it just money?” And I lie and say “yes” because I don't know how to tell her that it was really because I needed help. My kids would have gotten better care. Their home life would have been more stable. There would have been fewer "bad days” and more “good days.” My older daughter could have gotten diagnosed way earlier if somebody was keeping an eye on us and noticing the signs. But she was a little kid in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. Little girls weren't getting looked at for autism. And neither were grown women.