The Doe’s Latest Stories

Part I: The Background

PortionoftheCure: As the world began grinding to a halt at the beginning of the year, solutions seemed ineffective and distant. I consider myself more fortunate than most as COVID-19 is the first real life-altering event that has affected me as a young adult. Watching the future unfold, I wanted to be a part of it—not to bore my grandchildren with stories, but to know I made the conscious decision to help it. My impact is yet to be determined, but I sleep more easily knowing I am one of many who placed their health in the hands of the hardworking men and women in the scientific and health community.Which is to say, on a whim, I signed up for a COVID-19 vaccination through a series of applications I found on Reddit. I didn't actually expect to be contacted—I’m a white male in his late 20s with no special heritage, conditions or dependents. But to my surprise, I was quickly contacted and asked to sign up for the AZZ1222 trial through MedPharmics. It was a two-year study with the first visit lasting three hours. The company had an office and lab in the hospital complex ten miles away and actually had an opening that same day. I requested the next day to consider my answer, particularly due to the suddenness and anxiety of straying more than two miles from home for the first time in ten months.Denny1980: This was supposed to be the first year of the rest of my life. The beginning of 2020 marked the ending of a four-year-long career change from investment banking into medicine. I graduated from a Physician Associate (PA) program in December 2019 and accepted a position in orthopedic surgery in New York City shortly before Christmas. I moved to New York in mid-February and was excited about my future, more than I ever had been in the past. I was a new grad beginning a new career that I loved and I was moving to a city where I always wanted to live. Then COVID-19 hit full-force. I guess 2020 wasn’t my year, or anyone else’s for that matter. I’ve never been known to have good timing. Within a month of moving, the pandemic caused NYC hospitals to become overrun with critically ill patients, triggering a citywide—then countrywide—shutdown. My orthopedic surgery training came to a grinding halt by mid-March (two weeks after I started) when all elective surgeries were canceled. Shortly afterward—almost overnight—my orthopedic surgery specialty hospital turned into a COVID-19 overflow hospital, and it remained so for most of the summer. It was remarkable to see this transformation occur. I, along with everyone else at my hospital, was proud to fulfill my duty as a clinician to help ease the burden on other NYC hospitals and take care of people who needed it the most. Right from the start of this pandemic, a common topic of conversation with colleagues was the development of a vaccine. “This vaccine can’t come soon enough,” I kept hearing. “Things will get better once they develop a vaccine.” Now, writing this article in mid-December, the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine were administered two days prior. It was such a relief to hear this news and also incredibly exciting. This might be the first time that members of the scientific community were heralded as heroes for coming to everyone’s rescue with an injection that will hopefully save thousands, if not millions, of lives. They deserve our praise and gratitude.

Part II: The Process

PortionoftheCure: The morning after agreeing to the trial, I strolled into the office. As a southern Mississippian, I can vouch we have the nicest, sweetest receptionists and nurses. The lady I previously spoke with signed me in. I was given the standard information sheet to fill out (they asked for an out-of-state emergency contact, in case of evacuation). I was then given a 26-page read for my consent that covered research on the vaccine—how a double-blind study works, what symptoms to expect, the risks involved and the schedule for the trial for the next two years. Like most medical trials, financial compensation was offered, though I would have agreed to testing the vaccine without it. I had a 66 percent chance of receiving the vaccine, but neither I nor my nurse would know unless I developed severe symptoms and was tested. I would get the injection that day and return for my booster shot a month later, along with sporadic visits after that. A lighter set of reading material explained how my private information would be coded to protect my identity, and it gave me the option to let my DNA be stored for future research. Once I read over everything, I was called back to see a nurse, who went over the same material. The thorough process took over an hour. After nodding “yes” to lawyer-speak, nurses took my weight, tested my oxygen and blood pressure, and then poked for a few vials of blood. That was 90 percent of the visit. Denny1980: My hospital notified us that the vaccine would be administered to employees starting on December 14. Administrators explained that it would be given out on a rolling basis, and we should look out for emails about scheduling an appointment to receive it. Shortly after, I was ecstatic to find out I was selected to be in the first wave of vaccinations. I signed up immediately to receive mine at 2:45 p.m. on December 15. It was a surreal experience and the anticipation of receiving it was a total through-the-roof experience. When I arrived in the room at my appointment time, I was greeted by a nurse sitting at a table. She had me fill out a questionnaire about my health history and my reactions to medicines and vaccines. Once I was officially cleared, I was brought to a cubicle and asked to sit and wait for a few minutes. Apparently, each vial of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine contains enough vaccine for about five people. Once they have five people ready for the injection, the frozen vial is thawed, and then the nursing staff must administer it within a few minutes before it becomes ineffective.

Part III: The Injection

PortionoftheCure: The moment arrived. Another nurse came in and gave me a shot (it had a 33 percent chance of being a placebo) and that was it! I sat out in the lobby with an observer for 15 minutes, who made sure I didn't have an extreme reaction, and was told to contact them only if I had severe symptoms. Otherwise, they would call me and check-in a week later.Denny1980: Quick administration is critical, but the vaccine was given out the same way any shot is. I was asked which arm I wanted to use, then the nurse took an alcohol swab and cleaned my arm. Then I saw it—a syringe with a clear liquid inside, a syringe I’ve been waiting to see since mid-March. I was almost star-struck. The nurse injected me, and it was done—the first of two vaccine doses was inside my body and I felt like a rock star. I was asked to wait for about 20 minutes to make sure I didn’t have any anaphylactic reactions. Then, I was on my way.

Then I saw it—a syringe with a clear liquid inside, a syringe I’ve been waiting to see since mid-March. I was almost star-struck.

Part IV: The Aftermath

PortionoftheCure: I left the office around noon. I went home, exercised, ate lunch and took a nap. When I awoke at 4 p.m., I knew something was off. I had fallen asleep without an air conditioner in the middle of a Mississippi afternoon and I was freezing. I checked my temperature, which read 101.5. Well, probably not the placebo then, eh? As someone who has worked in the hospitality business, I learned long ago how to dodge most of the infected people spewing colds everywhere. This was the first time I’d felt sick outside of congestion in years. Instantly, I regretted signing up for the trial.The regret passed pretty quickly. I was home, safe, with clean water and the internet. I could ride this out, as others had done before me. I shivered in my miserable comfort, drinking water and trying to nap until my fever broke about 12 hours later. Throughout this fever, the injection site on my arm became very sore, and the ache spread to the rest of my body, which included a headache that became splitting when I moved my eyes. I laid in bed for about three days, getting up to eat some fruit and use the restroom. My immune system kicked my butt. But by the fourth day, I felt completely normal, aside from a slight ache persisting around the injection site. A few days later, MedPharmics gave me a call and a representative expressed her sympathy for my discomfort. She told me if I had any questions or concerns, they were available 24/7.Denny1980: About five hours after receiving the injection, I took a photo of the CDC card showing proof of my vaccination and posted it on both Instagram and Facebook with the caption, “First of two COVID vaccines received and I feel fine!” More than 24 hours after receiving it, I am happy to report I still feel fine. I do have some very minor soreness at the injection site, but I only feel discomfort if I press in that area. There is no redness, no swelling. I never felt dizzy or ill in any way. I know I am one data point out of many thousands, but my condition, more than 24 hours after administration, is in-line with how the vast majority of people have felt in Pfizer’s clinical trials.

If you decide to pass on the vaccine, please don’t let it be because you’re afraid of the side effects. It is safe. Very safe.

Part V: The Future

PortionoftheCure: Two weeks from now, I will go in to get my booster shot, which will be a much quicker ordeal than the first visit since all my forms are signed and lab work is done. I’m glad I received it. As the multiple vaccines roll out into the public, it will be interesting to see which is the safest and most efficacious. Here's to fighting the good fight, and doing what you can to contribute to humanity’s battle against things that threaten our lives and the fabric of society.Denny1980: I will receive a booster shot three weeks from my injection. My hospital is not going to make this vaccine mandatory. Nor should they. I respect people’s decisions to put off receiving the vaccine until more data is collected. I even respect people’s decision to never to receive it. The method of making this vaccine is revolutionary. Thankfully, most people will choose to take it, which will help put this pandemic behind us. If you decide to pass on the vaccine, please don’t let it be because you’re afraid of the side effects. It is safe. Very safe. The mainstream news media—CNN, Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post—will undoubtedly report quite a bit about bad reactions to the vaccine. Sensationalism sells and the vaccine is the number one trending topic right now. Just this morning I saw a major news organization report that people should be on the lookout for Bell’s Palsy as a possible side effect. This is not newsworthy, in my opinion. It’s clickbait and absurd sensationalism. According to Pfizer’s clinical trial, only four out of 44,000 people reported facial paralysis, a number so insignificant it’s not even worth mentioning. Always remember: Sensationalism and fear get people to read and watch the news. I promise there will be lots more of this in the near future. For what it’s worth, more than 24 hours after receiving this vaccine, I still feel fine, and so do the vast majority of people who have already received it.

LeBron James and Leonardo DiCaprio are two of the most accomplished, highest-paid members of their respective fields in entertainment. Both have also been vocal champions of progressive causes during the span of their careers. But because these two globally recognized entertainers are represented by two different unions—the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) and SAG-AFTRA, respectively—James is walking the progressive talk and DiCaprio is not. As both an enduring NBA fan and a working-class, union actor, let me explain.This summer, while the NBPA was negotiating with team owners to create a safe healthcare “bubble” for its players and pushing them to advocate for more criminal justice reform, SAG-AFTRA gutted healthcare benefits for its most vulnerable members. If you missed hearing about this between the potential collapse of American democracy and the biggest pandemic in 100 years, you can be forgiven.

If you missed hearing about this between the potential collapse of American democracy and the biggest pandemic in 100 years, you can be forgiven.

The SAG-AFTRA Tax Code Is Inverted

On August 18th, the same day the NBA celebrated its historic first day of the playoffs during the COVID-19 pandemic, SAG-AFTRA sent an email to members that it would be raising the minimum income requirement from $18,040 annually to $25,950. In addition, premiums would also increase and, most shockingly, members over 65 years old could no longer apply residual income from past projects toward healthcare eligibility. In one fell swoop, the union was making it more difficult for its lowest-paid members to qualify for healthcare, while simultaneously making it nearly impossible for retired senior members to meet the new requirements. And all during a global healthcare crisis in which most members had not worked since March.We are a union of actors. We are the progressive, liberal, do-gooder types, right? Surely it was a mistake. But upon digging into the overall dues structure of SAG-AFTRA, I found that my union of free-spirited artists is run more like a Republican think tank. Could the tired Fox News moniker of “Hollywood hypocrisy” actually be true?Without getting too deep in the weeds, all members of SAG-AFTRA are required to pay an annual fee of $222.96 plus 1.58% of earnings up to $500,000. What about earnings above $500,000? Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Those earnings are totally free and clear from paying dues. So unlike our progressive federal tax code, which taxes the wealthiest Americans at a higher marginal tax rate (44 percent at the peak), the SAG-AFTRA’s dues structure is actually regressive. As an example, on the set of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, DiCaprio’s real-life stunt man actually ends up paying a bigger cut of his paycheck in dues than DiCaprio himself or his steely-abbed co-star, Brad Pitt. Mitch McConnell would drool at the opportunity of inverting the American tax code to benefit the rich like this.

There’s a Big Difference Between the NBA and Hollywood Unions

What about my favorite entertainment product, the NBA? Is their union set up in this similarly regressive fashion? Actually, quite the opposite. In the NBA, there is a salary cap on how much the biggest stars in the league can make. In exchange, the union negotiates that team owners pay role players and bench players more. Last season, LeBron James made $37.4 million. That’s a lot, but without a salary cap, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst estimates LeBron would be making closer to $50-60 million annually. Why does King James take this pay cut? Because in a league where the average career spans only four-and-a-half years, it ensures that “middle class” bench or role players can make enough to live off until they can find another form of employment.Meanwhile, in the world of Hollywood, our biggest stars—our LeBron James’s if you will—take no such pay cut to help out their fellow actors. In fact, just the opposite. They contribute to dues at a lower percentage of income than the extra whose name won’t even make the end credits. If SAG-AFTRA operated more like the NBA, or hey, even the tax code passed by Trump in 2017, then those megastars would contribute far more in dues and premiums so their less fortunate brethren could be provided the most basic health coverage.After all, certainly Hollywood’s biggest stars could contribute more. Here’s a list of a few actors who earned more than $40,000,000 on just one film in the last ten years: Robert Downey Jr., Sandra Bullock, Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Johnny Depp. That’s LeBron James money right there. How much in dues did they pay on $39,500,000 of that? Zero. What about the average actor or performer in Hollywood? In 2019, less than 20 percent of union members were earning the $18,040 annual income then required to make healthcare. Certainly, if the biggest A-listers knew they could help keep a retired journeyman actor or an injured stunt woman on their healthcare insurance they would, right?

We are a union of actors. We are the progressive, liberal, do-gooder types, right?

It’s Time A-List Actors Fix the System

Now, I suspect most of these highest-paid actors are totally unaware that the dues structure of their union is a regressive, Republican fever-dream. After all, us actors have agents to do all the math for a reason. But hopefully, this might bring it to their attention. Because it’s one thing to bash Trump and other Republicans as cruel and heartless (they are). But it’s another thing to dip into your own wallet to help out a fellow actor who didn’t have a few big breaks go their way. And hey, what goes around, comes around. I’d like to think that even if Leonardo loses all of his fortunes to Toby McGuire in an all-night poker game, he too should live in a future where he can still get health insurance from his ongoing Titanic residuals. As things are structured now, he wouldn’t.

Acquiring a master’s degree was my big dream—and a big shot in life. It was something I knew I wanted to do since graduating with a bachelor’s. And I was all set to achieve it and have a great future. Then the pandemic happened. I’m from a strange corner of the world. The South of Brazil is not the tropical paradise most people associate with the rest of the country. It is cold in the winter and lacks the paradisiac beaches. But it shares the same diversity as the rest of the country, especially among its people. My family members are descendants of immigrants. Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Uruguayan—somehow, centuries of population movement converges inside the same familiar group. We’re a big family. I have around 30 close relatives between uncles, aunts and cousins. To grow up in this context is quite peculiar. Everything was a mixture—the languages, the foods, the beliefs. But under the same Brazilian identity, all of us find common ground. We were also united by my grandmother, the matriarch with Italian origins, who had the ability to congregate as many people together as she could. She had nine children and raised them by herself when my grandfather suddenly passed away in the 1970s. At the time, her youngest was only four. She had a few core values that she was very strict about: charity is a priority; well-being comes from good (Italian) food; and education is the most valuable resource in the world. She worked hard, without ever stopping to help others in need, and made my mother, my uncles and my aunts graduate from university. She could even see the next generation graduating from higher levels, but passed away right before my bachelor’s graduation ceremony in 2017.That’s why my master’s degree was such an important thing. My academic career brings joy and a sense of accomplishment to the family. Not only because of the honor, but because I’m studying ways to improve journalism in Latin America. That reached another level when I was approved for a degree abroad. It was all set—the documents, the money, the luggage. And I did it. I left the family behind to follow new paths and learn more.

The Pandemic Impacted My Family’s Way of Life

The world quickly changed. As I was finishing my first year in Denmark, the pandemic spread across the globe. Suddenly, I found myself on a plane going back to Brazil. The courses migrated online, and I didn’t have the money to stay in Europe. I didn’t even feel like it was happening. It was outside of my control. “I’ll make it work,” I kept telling myself. Not long after, my father’s company closed and our financial situation changed. From March to July, we had some difficult moments struggling to pay all the bills. My father, the sweetest German guy you’ll ever meet, was broken. I didn’t see him smile for months. My mother, who also worked with him, started to behave in survival mode, learning what she could to build a new business. Even though I had a partial scholarship, my parents were the main sponsors of my degree. As the semester continued, I didn’t know if I would be able to finish the program at all. With Brazil facing a major recession, my entire family was affected. I never considered asking for help; it wasn’t the right time. And, on top of that, I couldn’t see all my relatives. Being back home was like being in limbo—I had to stay inside of my household, with my parents, focusing on what we could do to sustain ourselves without seeing anyone else.

I Was Overwhelmed by My Family’s Generosity

Then my eight aunts and uncles did something amazing. They got together (virtually) and showed their kindness by pulling out their savings and investing in my education. It’s what vó (grandma, in Portuguese) taught us: “Help the ones in need first, especially with education—and I know you’ll buy some pasta, too,” one of my aunts told me. She called me on a Friday afternoon to tell me that. I was crying over the phone. My mind shut down. I remember not being able to think, to rationalize. It was an overwhelming feeling. On that specific day, I had a headache crisis. I’d started to work remotely for a media company that week. Suddenly, I was the only employed member of my household. I knew it would be a challenge to balance that and a thesis, but it’s what I needed to do. For a long time in my life, I didn’t see my family with the value that they have. We are all different, we all disagree. But we will never abandon each other. We never chose to be born into this context, but we choose every day to remain in it. The kindness in their acts goes way beyond the money they lent me. They provided a young, dreamy journalist with hope and security. I’m currently back in the program and living in Europe. And I’m focusing all my energy on repaying them the best way I can: being a better journalist, helping to improve democracy in my country and telling stories that matter. Like my own.

I have suffered from a flight phobia since my childhood. The process of boarding a flight, enduring long layovers and learning about last-minute delays makes for a nerve-wracking experience. During flights, I usually experience vertigo, nausea and jitters, especially if it’s a turbulent one. I can’t relax while commuting in any form, but air travel is the worst.

As if Dealing With My Aerophobia Wasn’t Enough…

Last year, I was on a Singapore-bound plane trip from Karachi with a six-hour layover in Colombo, Sri Lanka. To avoid 12 hours of unrelenting anxiety, and since I was preparing for a long flight, I had taken a mild medication (which had side-effects that included increased appetite) to calm my nerves. While the flight was mostly smooth, my layover extended to eight hours because of weather conditions. This was a cause of worry for me. Because of my medication, I was ravenous and discovered that I happened to have only Pakistani rupees and Singaporean dollars in my wallet.The money exchange counter at the airport offered little help. The airport wasn't accepting Pakistani rupees as currency, and told me that converting my dollar note would account for considerable loss due to the exchange rate. I decided not to try it. This trip occurred during late December, so the entire airport was festooned with baubles and streamers. There were tempting Christmas deals and fantastic discounts in shops all over the airport. Since I’m partial to both and can turn into a bit of a shopaholic on occasion, it took a superhuman amount of self-restraint not to browse through the tempting array of perfumes and chocolates. The lack of cash in hand, however, fostered my resolve.

A Stranger Came to My Rescue

While I was whiling my time away by strolling the tiny, glitzy Colombo airport, I noticed a scarf-clad girl about my age smiling at me. I had seen her six hours earlier while waiting for my flight to board at the Karachi airport lounge. We had briefly chatted—she could talk a mile a minute—and I learned she was a lawyer traveling to Malaysia for sightseeing. Our introductory chat was cut short once we began boarding, and our seats were far apart, so we didn’t get a chance to continue our conversation. When I spotted her again, I was relieved to see a familiar face amongst the sea of strangers. She approached me, smiling, and asked me about my issue (she had seen me arguing with someone at the currency exchange counter). I told her about my predicament, and she immediately offered to help. She had Srilankan rupees in cash, and persuaded me to at least share a pizza with her at Pizza Hut since she was craving some company. I refused, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was starving, in all honesty, so I agreed to her offer. We discussed our families, places we had traveled and everything in between. Time flew by. We even happened to have a few mutual acquaintances. Eventually, we exchanged numbers and added each other on social media. She confided that last year, on her way to the Maldives, she had made an unlikely friend in a similar fashion with whom she was still in touch. I offered to pay her back in Pakistani rupees, or later from Singapore, and asked for her bank details. She wouldn’t hear of it. She suggested I could probably treat her to lunch once we were both back in Karachi from our respective trips, and I agreed.

Pizza and a Friend Are a Great Match for Aerophobia

The cheese and bread did wonders for my nerves and satisfied my hunger pangs. Soon, the announcement came for us to board our respective flights and we parted on cordial terms. We don’t get much time to meet in person due to our hectic schedules but have kept in touch over social media. When we occasionally meet up for lunch, I make it a point to treat her to Pizza Hut, a choice she finds very amusing. To this day, she hasn’t accepted my offer to pay her back.

The first five years of my life were great. My mom and dad had good jobs at a senior center and we had a beautiful house. We would go on vacations, and I even remember traveling to Disneyland, riding the teacups and wearing Minnie ears that my dad bought me. But after I turned five, my uncle came into my life, and everything changed. I had never met Junior before, and my family never talked about him. So when he walked in my Nana’s door, I was curious. He told us funny stories about his time in the Army. He would take me anywhere I wanted to go and buy me whatever I wanted. He was a charmer. My favorite uncle, Tyrone, voiced his concerns, but no one batted an eye. Then my whole childhood changed. At the time, Junior was living with my grandparents. One day, when I was in his room watching cartoons, he picked me up, sat me on his lap and started tickling me. He looked at me and told me he loved me, but “not like a niece.” I was so confused. “What do you mean, uncle?” I asked him. “I love you more than anything! To the moon and stars. You’re my favorite person,” he replied. “I love you, too, uncle,” I told him. Then he kissed me, and stuck his tongue in my mouth. I didn’t know what to do. I was frozen. Then he started touching me. I was so scared and confused. He told me never to talk about our little secret.

The Sexual Abuse Only Got Worse

The same encounters started happening more frequently, and he started getting more abusive. Until I was 11 years old, Junior raped, abused, tortured, sodomized and mind-controlled me. He would throw me in an ice bath or a dark closet if I behaved badly. He would let the neighbor lady downstairs use me. If I tried to tell anyone, he would threaten to kill me. I remember going to my happy place when it happened. My parents had become addicts and always spent their money on drugs instead of bills. I remember coming home from school a few times and we were locked out of our homes. When we lost our home again, I had to stay with Junior for a while. My dad has been clean for 13 years and my mom for six, but it felt like I was living in a nightmare. I won’t go into detail of what happened to me, but I will say monsters are not under the bed. They walk among us.

My Domestic Violence Survivor Story Doesn’t Stop There

When I was 19 years old and living with my roommate, we went to a club called OverDrive on a Saturday night. The club was lit, and while I was in line, my friend Demetrius from junior high recognized me and stood with us. We started catching up. I asked him about his friend. “Who is that?” I asked. “Oh, that’s my boy, Rashaud,” he said. “We go way back.” I gave Demetrius my number and told him to keep in touch. The next day Rashaud texted me. We went on a date a couple days later. It was the beginning of a seven-year relationship filled with heartache and abuse. My housing situation became tenuous. My friend wasn’t keeping up with her part of the rent. I couldn’t afford a two-bedroom apartment by myself, so I told her I was moving out. I couch-surfed, bouncing from house to house. When I didn’t have a place to sleep, I slept in my car. I couldn’t stay with Rashaud because he lived with his mom. My parents were in a homeless shelter with my younger siblings, so I couldn’t stay with them. I was working full-time and then some, just so I could save up for a place, which is hard without any credit.

A Complete Stranger Was There for Me When No One Else Was

Rashaud and I were only together a few months when I found out I was pregnant on my 20th birthday. (Happy birthday to me.) I still remember I took two tests that night, and one the next morning, just to make sure. The doctors told me I was three-and-a-half weeks pregnant. I was shocked because I was on birth control. When I told Rashaud, he acted like he was happy. I used to get horrible night sickness. As I got bigger it was difficult to sleep in a car or on a couch, so I got a room at Motel 6 when it was payday. One morning at check-out time, I didn’t have all the money for the room. I begged the clerk to give me some more time to get the money. “Sorry, but my hands are tied!” he said. “When you get all of the money for the room, come back.” I went to get all my things together to leave. I was in tears and scared. I didn’t know what I was going to do. This woman stopped me and said she overheard everything. She asked if I was okay. I told her I was fine. “How far along are you sweetie?” she asked me. I told her I was a few months and having a baby girl. She insisted on helping because she didn’t want to see a pregnant woman sleeping in a car. I finally gave in and thanked her for helping me. We went back to the front desk and she paid for a couple of weeks. I was in shock. No one has ever done something like that for me. I asked her if I could pay her back but she declined. “Just give people a hand up when you can, okay?” she told me. I will never forget the sweet woman who left an impression on my heart. When I was six months pregnant, my parents got a place and asked me to come live with them. I was so happy to have a home again. I was so worried about having somewhere for me and my baby. At my 5D sonogram appointment, I got to see Mia's perfect little face. She had so much hair. But after I had Mia, the abuse started again.

She insisted on helping because she didn’t want to see a pregnant woman sleeping in a car.

My Domestic Abuse Survivor Story Has a Happy Ending

In the beginning, it was verbal. Then Rashaud started pushing me. I should have left then, but I was stupid. Some days were good and some were really bad. Mia was 15 months old when I found out I was pregnant with my second daughter Anicia. I was so scared to tell him. When I showed him the test, he didn’t say a word and just left the house. The next nine months were okay. I wasn’t getting yelled at as much. But after I had Anicia, the beatings started. It got to the point where I was getting beat up almost every day. I was good at hiding everything—or so I thought. Six years ago, when Mia was six and Anicia was four, I finally left Rashaud. We were living in our own place at the time. I called my dad to come get us and I never looked back. I finally had had enough. I was able to get back on my feet with help from my parents. I got hired to a better paying job. Things were finally looking up. I remembered what the sweet woman said about paying it forward. I help out whenever I can. I’ll go around the neighborhood and ask if the elderly and disabled need anything. I’ll clean their homes, run errands and visit with them. During the holidays, I go to the homeless shelter to find a couple families to help out for Christmas. My family and I cook a huge feast and invite people over who don’t have anywhere to go. This year, we are sewing scarves and blankets for the homeless. We've got a bunch of gloves, too. I love giving others a hand up. Seeing a smile on people’s faces is the best. If we had more people in the world to help others, the world would be a better place.

When I was little I learned it was best to be kind. That's what little girls do. They look cute in their outfit, and act helpful and kind. My father was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and my mom was a silent warrior who tried her best to show us how to live. She was also young and had her own struggles, and couldn’t keep on giving when she herself was empty.As a child, feeling forgotten made me try even harder to be nicer and more thoughtful. If I could get things just right, if I could perform perfectly, things would be okay. If I could be nice enough and funny enough, my dad would want to stay home. If I could help my mom enough, I would ease her burden enough to make her smile with those bright blue eyes.I would have done anything for them. I remember being six and wondering what I could do to make the suffering end. How could I change our lives? Who did I need to be to make everyone happy?I never did figure it out, but I kept trying. Bringing homemade beers from the stash under the back porch to my dad seemed to make him happy—until it didn’t. Without warning, he would flip a switch and rage all over us, lost in his own suffering. It was a fine line I never did get right.Desperate to be helpful I picked greens from my mother's garden and made a dinner salad. When I sliced into my finger and blood ran down my arm and dress, I swallowed my fear. I bandaged myself, scrubbed the stream from the kitchen to the bathroom, and ran cold water over my dress to hide my failure.That is how I started life. Pouring myself into everyone. Trying to fix all the holes in our lives by being as sweet as I possibly could. Hoping it would be enough. Smiling to hide my pain, laughing to hide my hurt. Emptying myself.

Women grow up believing that it’s our job to shine light on everyone around us, to pour ourselves into other people’s needs, to spread kindness over everyone.

I Take Care of People Who Hurt Me Better Than I Take Care of Myself

Many girls grow up this way, no matter who our parents are. The kindness built into us from the start, the need to be cute—it’s almost universal for little girls. Women grow up believing that it’s our job to shine light on everyone around us, to pour ourselves into other people’s needs, to spread kindness over everyone.We are never told that a break would be okay, or taught to stop and wonder what we can do for ourselves. That, after all, would be selfish. That programming runs deep. Every day I feel the need to make people like me, even people I don’t like. I must prove that I am caring and I am thoughtful. I make sure people know I am a nice girl who does nice things. That I am kindness wrapped in a soft blanket of love and tenderness. Even if inside is a raging pit of fire.I am a mother now, and I still love kindness and the science behind it. I think about it often and I act on it daily. I make sure my own family performs random acts of kindness, and I still believe we should walk through life being kind. But I’ve come to understand that the hardest kindness is being kind to myself. It’s harder than being nice to people I don’t like, and to people who have broken my heart again and again. It's harder than being kind to strangers or strangeness that makes me cringe inside.

If You’re Truly Dedicated to Kindness, You Must Include Yourself

I want so badly for my five-year-old daughter to know what it looks like for a woman to be selfish—because now I know my own selfishness is a form of kindness. Kindness to myself.I want her to know that it’s important to be kind to others, but it’s more important to be kind to herself. I want her to love herself and know that it's okay to put herself first. That her worth runs deeper than pouring herself into the lifelong project of lifting other people up. Being selfish will get her places and keep her safe and make her strong. I want kindness toward herself to come easier than it does for me. It shouldn’t be her life’s most difficult act of kindness, as it is mine.

Okay, for starters, I've never actually been to any theme park for fun—ever. No, I'm serious. I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school, served for three or four years, and that gave me all the thrill I needed out of life. After that, the plan was school and freelance work till I either got famous and picked up by a design studio, or Kanye West deposited a million dollars in my bank account by accident. Since neither of those things have happened, I'll just tell you about what goes on at the one amusement park I worked at during the current pandemic. That way you'll avoid it because it's the least safe place to be in the country right now besides the White House.Think I'm lying?It all began at the beginning of the year. I’d recently graduated from school and needed a job—nothing crazy, just something to help pay bills. I’m an artist—design, illustration, all that shit—so I applied everywhere, looking for any type of work I could do that was art-related. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of entry-level creative jobs in Orlando, Florida. I wasn't surprised. I asked some friends—the ones who didn’t leave right after graduation—if any of the places they worked at were hiring. After about a week, a homey hit me back and told me this art job he had at Universal Studios was looking for more people. I took the job, no questions asked. Not only did I need the money, but I'd never been to Universal, and a chance to see it would be dope. So he set up an interview with his manager and I met up with him a few days later to show him my art portfolio. It was the most unorthodox interview I've ever had, but I got the job, my shit uniform and all.

Fun in the Time of COVID-19

I started at Universal in late February. It was hot, and there was a soundtrack that played all day on a loop, over and over. Since I worked in the KidZone, I had to listen to shit like Trolls and Shrek movie music all day. It was straight garbage, but it had its perks, plus the pay was decent.So we time-skip a little into April. By now all the world knows about COVID-19, and big business orders a shutdown on anything that would cost them money, including Disney and Universal’s respective parks. For a couple of months, we were all out of jobs. I went back to freelancing and surviving with my fiancée. It was a struggle since we both worked at Universal. (It wasn't easy to get her a job there with me, but it was convenient.) So, two artists, out of their normal nine-to-five, freelancing and living off what they know. Unemployment was like the lottery. A lot of us got denied before we even finished the application, only to find that the Florida government was doing it on purpose because they couldn't pay all of us like that.June came, and I got a text from my boss to open an email they’d sent me. (A simple phone call would've worked.) The parks were opening back up, woo-hoo. I was extremely skeptical, I didn't trust people with this pandemic, especially after watching crazy folks with guns storm state capital buildings—for fucking haircuts. These are the people who make up fake medical conditions to prevent having to wear a mask. My friend who got me the job has asthma that he's had his whole life. My fiancée was born with a lung deficiency, so she only has one actively strong lung. So when Patty Crybaby and Hank Hard-Headed whine about having to wear a mask, all my respect goes out the window. I just can't deal.I still went to work, of course, because I had bills to pay. I think that’s how all of us felt. As an employee, you could kind of tell what everybody around you was feeling, which was dread and desperation. We needed a way to survive, and this was the only guaranteed means that we had.

They lied about all the sanitation they said they’d do.

We Needed a Safe Workplace; We Got Theater

Universal made it feel like one of those cult books—1984, that George Orwell shit: “Big Brother is watching,” and all that. Yeah, that's what it felt like: giant posters of random Universal workers wearing masks, reading "Welcome Home, We Missed You." It was so creepy, and just so fucking weird that I honestly hope they fired whoever thought those were a good idea. Also, they lied about, um, well, all the sanitation they said they’d do. They didn't take it half as seriously as they said they did. I don't really have to back that up with evidence. The proof is in the numbers. Universal opened up one week; the next week, the whole state of Florida was the epicenter of the U.S. pandemic.Let me take you there: Okay, so daily, when you go through the back gate for employees, you have to get your temperature read. Too high, and they send you home. After you go into the first building in the back, which is wardrobe, you have to wear your mask at all times. They have hand sanitizer everywhere, so there’s never a point where you can't tap that bottle and get a little on you for safe measure. It was clockwork, a well-oiled machine—in to work and out, no problem, no issue.Or so most of us thought.The issues started to arise after I told my fiancée she should leave the park. She already had another job, so it wouldn't hurt us financially, and the thing about my boss was, he liked to run his mouth a lot. He was telling me and the other coworkers things that we needed to know but probably weren’t supposed to—like how other managers were getting infected and being sent home, but not the employees.We had a Zoom meeting late in July about opening up another art stand and had to go over the rules. This man told us, "The park is the safest place to be." So I dimed him out to everybody on the call. I told them all about how a week prior to this they’d let three employees come to work with high fevers—including one reading 103.8, and who was a damn chef, somebody who handles food.

I dimed him out to everybody on the call. I told them all about how a week prior to this they’d let three employees come to work with high fevers.

The Park’s Still Open: Why?

This park ain't safe.It was all smoke and mirrors and security theater, and for what? To get more of peoples’ money? They were practically giving away tickets—all the deals they have going on left and right—just to get the attendance up. It wasn't worth staying there and risking myself or my fiancée’s health. She already has a medical condition, and I'm not putting her life or any of my friends’ lives at risk. To this day, I still wish they would close both Universal and Disney because things aren't getting better. They're only getting worse. People aren't taking this seriously, especially when they don't even enforce the mask policy. It ain't worth it."Universal is the safest place to be." That shit still echoes in my head every time I see an ad for the park on social media. I know without a doubt I made the right call to leave. I'm clean, and so is my fiancée. I hope that every single person who walks into that park—or Disney or any of 'em— understands what they’re doing when they do. I wish them all the best from the safety of my apartment.

I am 28 years old and this November will be the first major election I can legally take part in. I grew up in the heavily policed, crime-bill-funded “zero-tolerance” schools of the 1990s and early 2000s Los Angeles. The first time I was arrested was at age 11 for playing too rough in the schoolyard. Then again at 13 for leaving school early. And then every year after that until I was 19, when I was arrested and spent seven years incarcerated, followed by two years on parole. That was how I lost my voting rights. And now, after a decade of being barred from my legal right to vote, I will cast my first ballot for two people who took it away from me.The people I’m backing in this presidential election actively fought to put me and keep me in prison, not to benefit public safety but to benefit their political careers. I will be voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for President and Vice President of the United States.

When I was first incarcerated in 2011, California’s prison system was operating at over 200 percent capacity.

How Biden, Harris and “Tough on Crime” Democrats Locked Up People Like Me

As a senator, Joe Biden crafted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a sweeping range of measures designed to drastically invest in police and prisons, and divest from community health and safety. He understood that a “tough on crime” stance was good for him and the Democratic Party, which had been losing elections to Republicans for years. With the swipe of his pen, he designed policy that would help create the world I grew up in, one with schools that looked like prisons, police on every corner to catch “super-predators” like me, and three-strikes laws like the one California would use to put me in prison 17 years later.As Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris defended the California prison system in court while it was killing more than one inmate a day—people like me—due to overcrowding and unconstitutionally substandard health care. When I was first incarcerated in 2011, California’s prison system was operating at over 200 percent capacity, with almost 170,000 people locked up, which led to the medical neglect and mass death that Harris was charged with defending. It was in one of these overcrowded prisons that I read her book Smart on Crime, where she outlined neoliberal policies around decriminalizing low level drug offenses so that “serious criminals” could be locked away for a long time—sometimes forever. As a person convicted of robbery, considered serious and violent under the law, I knew which category she would put me in. It was the same category she put my friend Peter in when she was District Attorney of San Francisco and her office gave him 11 years for gun possession—a standard one-year sentence for the gun, plus a ten-year gang enhancement for refusing to tell law enforcement where he got it. Because, as she outlines in her book, Harris believes that only gang members don’t cooperate with law enforcement.

So why would I vote for them? Three words: to defeat Trump.

The Simple Reason I’m Still Going to Vote for Them

It would be one thing if Biden and Harris had drastically changed their positions since announcing their candidacies, but they haven’t. In response to the #DefundThePolice movement, Biden has recommended giving another $300 billion to departments around the country. Harris continues to advocate for liberal drug reform, like decriminalizing marijuana, while standing firm in her belief in punishment and long sentences. So why would I vote for them? Three words: to defeat Trump. So, I have registered to vote, after receiving proof that I discharged parole. On November 3, I will vote for the people in the best position to defeat the most destructive American president to serve in my lifetime. And on November 4, I will push like hell to abolish the police that Joe Biden funded in 1994, and shut down the prisons Kamala defended in 2014. I will push them to support the Breathe Act to return resources to our community’s needs. I will use the voting rights I fought to take back from a system that doesn’t serve us—not as an endorsement for the candidates, but as a tactic to build the community my younger self deserved.

It was October 1995, just shy of a year and a week since I’d been released from prison. My fiancée played me a phone message. I heard my friend Rojah, a big Rasta guy with a voice of unmistakable depth and resonance, sobbing and repeating the words, “They killed him, man. They killed Dennis.” I was stunned. Confused. My mind began automatically filling in details.Dennis? Dead? How? Where? I knew nothing but what I heard on that message.The last year and a half of my sentence was spent at HMP Dartmoor. I’d done okay. I took education courses and won some sports coaching awards, and after a few months there I was offered possibly the best job I’ve ever had in my life as a gym orderly “red band.” It’s kind of a trustee status that ensured a six-pound-a-week wage, unlimited gym access, a solid crew, food, herbal remedies, weed, tea and coffee. We even had our own little office, and smoking was allowed.It was in that gym—a giant, cold cowshed of a place—that I first properly met and befriended Dennis Stevens. I’d seen him on his wing a few times, always quiet, a well-respected inmate, self-contained and against hard drugs. When the prison reported his death they claimed that he had hung himself and overdosed, presumably on heroin.No way, on both counts.

In the vernacular, Dennis Stevens was fucked over by a racist court system and then killed by a racist prison system.

Dennis’s Time in Prison Was a Study in Institutional Racism

Dennis was nearing the end of a 12-year sentence for driving during a robbery. He’d already been disproportionately punished. Black men and women get much longer sentences in British courts. That’s not an opinion—it’s a fact. Just to put it in perspective, I was serving five years for committing a robbery. Rojah was serving a three-year stretch for burglary. We weren’t the mob, that’s for sure—more troubled young men than Tony Soprano.But, who knows the inner turmoil of a young man, sentenced to 12 years for driving on a low-level robbery? It was no major bank heist. No guns were involved. For the judge, the aggravating feature was Dennis’s color, and I can say that without a caveat of doubt. In the vernacular, Dennis Stevens was fucked over by a racist court system and then killed by a racist prison system. We can quibble about the fine print but that’s the bald truth.At Dartmoor, we lived serious, almost Zen-like lives. Dennis taught me yoga and Rojah turned a skinny white boy into quite a physical unit. They both contributed in equal measure to my recovery from a very dark place. I met hundreds of guys during my sentence and had numerous cellmates, but remember few names or faces. Dennis, Rojah and I formed a friendship and a bond that I can only imagine being akin to those formed in military units.On the night my fiancée played me the phone message, I wasn’t able to respond to Rojah’s call, so the next morning I phoned Dartmoor prison myself. I blagged the switchboard, saying that I needed to speak to the gym staff. I got through but was answered by the one screw I didn’t get on too well with. I asked him, “What happened to Dennis?”All he’d tell me was, “They’ll blame the screws.” Then he hedged and muttered that he wasn’t there on the night and couldn’t really talk to me, being an ex-inmate and all that. It told me very little. Knowing the gym staff, and the general respect and treatment I saw them give Dennis, they would’ve been shaken by his death, but one of the strengths of a system is when it has to close ranks, it does.

Going Public With My Story Finally Got Me Answers

I’d drawn a blank at Dartmoor but I kept an eye out on the media, although I heard little of his case. Then one day, perhaps a year after Rojah’s call, I saw an advert in the magazine The Big Issue from a BBC producer looking for stories of public interest. I phoned. The producer was outraged when I told her that Dennis had died in prison while being restrained, in very dubious circumstances.Until I got involved with the BBC I hadn’t had the kind of access—nor the research know-how—that they afforded me. Supported by an outstanding young BBC producer, we investigated Dennis’s death for a two-part documentary. I did what I could, and that for his family and all concerned—me in particular—it was necessary work. I befriended Dennis’s brother and sister over a period of time. They supported my efforts, be it through research or music. They wanted the question of who killed their brother to matter.The night of his death, Dennis was restrained in a lethal figure four leg lock for over 20 minutes, stripped naked, put in a body belt and left on a floor overnight. In the morning, he was dead. The horrific details of the damage to his body, all publicly accessible, support the assertion that Dennis Stevens’s death was the result of the criminal actions of multiple prison officers and medical staff. The officers involved are all named. Despite all compelling evidence to the contrary, the coroner at official inquest into his death barred the jury from considering an unlawful killing verdict.In all the time I spent with or around Dennis, I was always struck by his calm demeanor, his sheer physical presence. He was a handsome, proud Rastafarian British-Jamaican man. He always encouraged lads not to bother with heroin or crack cocaine. He was true Rasta—he only smoked weed, and was very careful about his diet and hygiene. He didn’t even smoke hash.In the documents and reports I got access to, it said that he was presenting to prison doctors in an anxious state, that he’d been prescribed Nitrazepam and that his behavior changed significantly after a home leave. It stank of whitewashing and the system protecting itself from the truth—a pattern that repeats to this day.It doesn’t take an expert to see, just in simple records, that this guy was having serious mental health problems. He was self-contained and disciplined, the model prisoner for almost a decade, then all of a sudden he’s in fights with staff and inmates?

Who killed Dennis Stevens?

The Figure Four Leg Lock Killed My Friend

Professor David Wilson, a world-renowned criminologist and former prison governor—a man who actually co-devised the control and restraint techniques used within the system—put it like this: “When Dennis’s behavior changed, instead of considering his mental health or wellbeing and exploring support options, he was immediately categorized as a security threat.” The die was cast and the end result was his death at the age of 29. He was Black, killed by all-white prison officers.Wilson, the only prison governor with a PhD, had resigned from the prison service, citing institutional racism as one of his reasons for doing so. He returned to academia and has had a notable career in TV as an expert commentator. For the BBC piece, he was the expert witness. His testimony was electrifying, damning and infuriating.The primary cause of Dennis’s death, based on the medical evidence and witness testimony, was the figure four leg lock. In our documentary, Wilson demonstrated the lock to give the viewer insight into the reasons why he instructed that it only ever be used for five minutes maximum. He said that 20 minutes was unspeakably bad. If you are put in that position and the leg lock is in place, the pressure on your chest makes it difficult to breathe almost immediately.The technique, as described to me by the man who devised it for use in a prison setting was clear in purpose. It was for staff to be able to safely restrain someone who was out of control and evacuate the cell safely, leaving them locked up to cool off. The last man out would be the guy applying the pressure to the locking leg. I suggest people do a search to find demonstrations of this technique.All involved in the BBC documentary concluded Dennis was unlawfully killed. Some of us use less generous language. Dennis’s death broke his family’s hearts. Rojah has carried the same conflicting memories I have. We had it good at Dartmoor for a summer or two and then Dennis ended up dead and the rose-tinted glasses start to crack under the g-force of reality. It was jail, and bad things happen in bad places. But they don’t need to.In later life, I studied criminology and ended up teaching at a university. After academia, I retrained as a counselor, working in rehabs for a few years before returning to writing and music. My journey has been long, and I know Dennis would have approved. None of this, I’m guessing, would have happened for me but for my association with Dennis and Rojah. He’d be glad to see that I’ve done okay, that I still make music and still read a lot. And, to this day, Rojah is a great friend of mine. It speaks well of those days and makes Dennis’s death all the more incomprehensible.I saw Rojah just the other day. We always chat about Den at some point when we talk. I told him I was going to write an article about Dennis and our friendship. He was delighted because like me, his life was changed forever by the question: Who killed Dennis Stevens?

It takes a certain amount of faith to pick up a hitchhiker. You don’t know who you’re inviting into your vehicle, if they’re dangerous or kind or a little bit off. There’s no way of knowing if they’ve got a weapon or criminal tendencies. You can’t tell at a glance whether they’re good or bad. And yet still you pull over and invite them into your car.Does that sound scary to any of you? It’s just as intimidating from the other side.Hitchhiking is a contract you make with people you’ve just met. From the traveler’s perspective, I agree to offer entertaining conversation in exchange for mileage, with the mutual agreement that all parties keep their hands to themselves. The driver gets company, the traveler gets that much closer to their destination, and each does their best to make sure the experience is worthwhile and enjoyable for the other.Never once was this unspoken pact violated.

You climb into the first stranger’s car and close the door. What happens next is largely out of your hands.

Hitchhiking Was a Happy Accident

The decision to travel with my thumb in the air was, like most of my life decisions, made with little thought but total commitment—a rash policy that’s given me just as many scars as happy endings. I’ve got trauma from the military, nightmares from Afghanistan and guilt over dead friends. But I’ve also got a passport with stamps, pictures of friends that make me smile and people in nearly every state in the country who’d help if I asked. This may not seem like much to some, but it’s all I’ve ever wanted. How many others can say they have the world? Give me scars. I’ll take those too if that’s what it takes to be free.Freedom is something everyone demands but nobody knows what to do with. I think most people—Americans especially—prefer the idea of being free rather than freedom itself and all the responsibility it entails. It’s why we’re captivated by celebrities, clergy, social media and all the other big-money mouthpieces telling us how to think and live. Give me freedom, yes, but someone else, please, tell me how to use it. Fear stops us from living our best lives. It holds us back from committing to adventures and self-growth. It stops us from picking up hitchhikers, helping strangers. Fear is the enemy of freedom. To quote motivational speaker George Addair, “Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.”That’s what attracted me to hitchhiking in the first place. It seemed like a crazy, exciting adventure, even though the idea scared the hell out of me. But once you’re committed, you’re committed. You climb into the first stranger’s car and close the door. What happens next is largely out of your hands.During my time traveling, it helped to remind me it takes a special sort of person to help a stranger on the side of the road. I know it’s naive to think every person who pulls over is a kindhearted soul, but I personally never experienced anything bad while traveling. If anything, some of my faith in humanity was even restored.

My Rides Taught Me to Value All People

I was helped by people across a broad spectrum of backgrounds and social standing. There was Julio, a Cuban immigrant and truck driver, whose broken-English speech about keeping happy in the head being just as important as feeling happy in the heart sticks with me to this day. The Campbells, an older couple, took me in for the night, gave me food and a place to sleep, and the next morning took me down the highway to a better spot to pick up rides. Mama G, the woman whose husband died and house burned down within a few weeks, made room for me and another traveler in her cramped little Nissan. She got us to Kansas, plus three nights in a hotel.In Colorado, I stayed with friends I hadn’t seen in years and was so happy, I literally cried. An old man who built tiny houses let me stay in one on his property at the foot of a mountain; the next morning, we had coffee over a campfire, and he bought me breakfast at a greasy spoon down the road. He left me at a crossroads in the flatlands.The next person who picked me up was already drunk and getting drunker. He was a concealed carry instructor who’d killed a man breaking into his home a few months prior. His wife had recently left him. We made it to New Mexico before we got pulled over and he was arrested. The state trooper who pulled us over told me to fuck off, and I did exactly that for two miles down a busy highway. After that, it was hard to get rides, and I was stranded in the next town for two days until a trucker from Mexico picked me up on his way to El Paso.There were so many more. How many strangers came into my life, changed it forever and left as quickly as they’d come? People from all over the world—of all ages, races, creeds and orientations—saw a stranger and chose to help. Not quite what the social narrative would lead one to believe would happen, no?

Maybe everyone else isn’t a villain after all.

I Found Freedom From Old Trauma

Autonomy means risks. When we completely control how we live our lives, there’s no safety net to catch you if you fall. That stability is reserved for those who play within the rules of social norms. In exchange for freedom, you get something like stability and peace of mind. Still, if you forsake those in lieu of control, you gain experience, confidence and the overwhelming suspicion that maybe life isn’t so bad. Maybe everyone else isn’t a villain after all. That’s not to say there aren’t any villains at all—you’d be foolish to think otherwise—but they’re not as common as the news or social media make them out to be.I live with PTSD, my souvenir from Afghanistan. I’ve learned to manage and mitigate it over the years. PTSD means anxiety, and anxiety leads to fear, leading to more anxiety and an increase in other post-traumatic symptoms. Travel, especially hitchhiking, helped cure me of much of my anxiety. It helped me manage my trauma. It forced me to live in the moment and make peace with the fact that some things are just out of my hands and not worth getting angry over. Who cares if you don’t get picked up for hours on end? What does it matter what others think of you on the side of the road? They have their lives to live, and I have mine, and I wouldn’t trade places with them for the world. I have travel, freedom, experience. I have adventure. I have fulfillment. Sometimes, I look at the world and get bitter; is this really a place that was ever worth fighting for? Then, I remember my journeys and all the people I’ve met. I remind myself they’re only a small representation of the total goodness that exists and that they’ve been there the entire time. I remind myself that fear is the ultimate enemy of freedom.Then, I look at my life and how I have all I need, and I realize freedom is what made it possible. I have exactly what I need, and nothing more. I have friends, and I have stories. There are people I love in this world and places that have made me who I am. And that is something worth fighting for.

The first item I ever stole was an umbrella. Two minutes later, the umbrella broke. I laughed and thought, who cares? I didn't pay for it anyway. Of course, if I had paid for it, I would have gone back and got a refund and maybe even got a new umbrella. But stealing makes items meaningless. For a person who loses items on a regular basis, a meaningless item is highly valuable. If you don't get attached to items, then you don't get sad when they're gone because they never meant anything to you in the first place. The next item I stole was a leopard-print bra from Victoria's Secret, worth about £70. That night, I wore it to a club. For some reason, it was annoying me. So I took it off. I thought I'd put it in my pocket, but I just dropped it on the street. The next morning, I pretended to myself that I didn’t care. But deep down, I knew that it was pathetic and childish—someone might have saved up for weeks to buy that bra, and I just stole it for adrenaline, then disregarded it like a useless cloth. It wasn't for about a year until I started to get embarrassed about stealing things. I wasn't defined by it, but I was definitely controlled by it. When your life is out of control, the natural human reaction is to seek a method of control, whether it’s control over another person or what you eat, smoke or drink. You think you control the addiction, but the addiction controls you. Kleptomania controlled me for nearly four years. Now that I have almost conquered the addiction, I wanted to reflect. Let’s start with my first ever session at Addicts Anonymous. This is where my recovery began. Why did I take the leap? I suppose I was a bit desperate. I felt very out of control and needed some method of deterrence. Also, none of the counselors I worked with had much training in addiction and not any at all in kleptomania. I thought the AA team might have some experience with it.

I like attention, but not everyone staring at me while I confess the most embarrassing addiction on the planet.

I Didn’t Feel Judged When I Went to My First Meeting

Everybody is introducing themselves and drinking tea. One man from Belfast says that he hates people. He stares us all in the eyes as he tells us this: He really hates people. But as soon as he has some cocaine inside of him, he fucking loves people. An awkward-looking ginger man from Cork tells us that he's just been kicked out of his fifth house this year. He cannot pay the rent because he spends it all on weed. He will continue to disappoint his friends and his family because he can't survive without weed.A girl with a Dublin accent starts speaking very quickly. She's just been diagnosed with a severe liver problem, and she has serious health anxiety. She has a friend who came as support. The friend tells us that she herself is not struggling with an addiction, but she thinks that some of her friends might have addictions that they are shrugging off as part of university life.An aristocratic man from Eton with polished shoes gives us a Shakespearean-like monologue about his alcoholism. He describes a cave for which he has the key. He feels like a monster who should be trapped and locked up in the cave because outside the cave, there is alcohol, pubs and drugs. He wants someone else to own the key.What struck me was the respect from the rest of the group. Everything is accepted and usually related to by another member. There is a look of release from each speaker, as if they can breathe again. It's my turn to talk.I am really nervous. I like attention, but not everyone staring at me while I confess the most embarrassing addiction on the planet (except maybe a porn addiction).I tell them that nothing that I steal I particularly need or want. I don't steal because I'm poor or struggling financially. It's a coping mechanism for dealing with losing things, being disorganized and failing exams. Crucially, it's a secret that my family doesn't know about. They can berate me about everything that I don't deserve, but this one thing I have to myself and they don't know about it.I tell them that I feel so shameful every time I steal. I always feel sorry for the shopkeepers who are innocently trying to do their jobs. I know as soon as I enter a shop that something is going to happen, whether I like it or not. I've been in shops crying as I steal because I have no control over my body or mind. On the way back home, I sob. “I know this is not a normal addiction, and maybe you guys are thinking that no one can help me here,” I say.The British aristocrat takes my hand and tells me that everything I said about my addiction is the same as everyone else. The regrets, the shame, the guilt, the secrets from families and friends. I am crying even more because I actually feel heard and unjudged. I can’t actually believe that I am not being judged. But I suppose if they judged me, then they would be judging themselves. Everyone is open-wounded in Addicts Anonymous. But with close-wounded friends, who are not as vulnerable, it’s much easier to feel judged. I do not think any of my friends have ever really judged me at all, but the deep shame and guilt attached to an addiction makes you believe it.

Three years, three therapists and three boyfriends later, Operation Conquer Kleptomania is not complete.

My Journey Isn’t Over, but I Wouldn’t Have Come This Far Without Addicts Anonymous

That evening, I walk home thinking that I actually can conquer kleptomania for the first time. I also think that people who go to Addicts Anonymous are brave. It is embarrassing to admit that you have an addiction. Some people think it's cool. We watch films like Trainspotting, Withnail and I and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and think, maybe drinking or doing drugs all the time would be pretty sexy! But the reality is less wild freedom and more of the chained existence of shame. Most people with addictions have low self-esteem, even if they seem confident.If you are struggling with kleptomania, then I would recommend Addicts Anonymous. It feels like a warm hug. You can be proud of yourself for actually addressing your demons. And that pride, along with the support of other addicts, gives you confidence. Confidence to tackle the shame. And maybe confidence to tackle the actual addiction, which is an amazing feat.Three years, three therapists and three boyfriends later, Operation Conquer Kleptomania is not complete. But there has been significant progress—I only steal from supermarkets now. If I had never attended Addicts Anonymous, I would have bottled up the shame and kept stealing excessively. I am a stubborn person, and when I feel judged, I retreat to an inner sanctum and try to protect myself. Like a hedgehog, I put up spikes that hurt people. But I believe deep down that those intruders will hurt me more. But there are no spikes at Addicts Anonymous, just a group of other vulnerable and wounded individuals. If I ever told my family the truth, I imagine they would degrade me, humiliate me, lose complete trust in me, bitch about me. No addict really deserves that, and crucially, no addict will recover from that sort of treatment. That’s why it’s so crucial to find people who help relieve you of that guilt weighing you down, distracting you from seeing the reality of the actions. They can push you to recovery in a supportive and productive way.

“Go into a crowded room and look for a super hot female,” my boss told me. “I mean 11 out of 10. Buy a soda water with lime in a rocks glass. It’ll look like vodka. Approach her with confidence, and ask if she’s single.”My first time on the job, I didn’t follow what the owner suggested to me in my training. His way seemed idiotic. I got a real drink instead, and I started actual conversations with women rather than jumping straight to the point. Eventually, we would get talking about our jobs, and I would mention that I was a matchmaker. I helped women find love. What they didn’t know was that I only helped attractive women find love. With millionaires.I originally found the job through a Craigslist ad. The breakdown made it seem like I would do more matchmaking than recruiting. After watching an episode of The Millionaire Matchmaker, I was intrigued. I thought it would be fun. I had taken a lot of odd jobs in my early 20s, and this wasn’t any weirder than what I was used to. I needed something that could pay the bills but also gave me the flexibility to work on my other goals.Three of us were hired and trained together, so the night after our training, we decided to go out and recruit as a team. I picked the nightclub. I was working part-time as a cocktail waitress, so I knew how to get through the doors of exclusive places with ease. One of the recruiters was shy and had a hard time approaching people. The other recruiter and I hit it off and started working the room together. By the end of the night, we each had about 10 business cards and a handful of other numbers written down.

What they didn’t know was that I only helped attractive women find love. With millionaires.

The Money Was Easy, but It Came With Complications

We received about $200 for each woman that ended up being matched on a date. My first paycheck was around $2,000. It felt easy for me, and I didn’t give it much thought until shit started hitting the fan.At my waitressing job, I got in trouble for soliciting women. I laughed it off, but it should have been a red flag. I thought matchmaking was an entertaining conversation starter. It was also a way of killing two birds with one stone and getting double the pay for my time. The lounge I worked at had a plethora of supermodels constantly walking in and out of the door, so sometimes, I would talk to them about their relationship status and try to get them set up. It wasn’t any more invasive than the couples that would ask me if I was into threesomes, and at least I would hopefully get paid for my intrusion.I tried to get my friends set up, but I was told after their initial interviews that some weren’t attractive enough. I never had the heart to tell them, so I would follow up with something like, “They’re looking for the perfect match for you, and it could take weeks!” And they would just keep waiting.I severed a relationship with another friend because I freaked her sister out when I tried to set her up on a date. It didn’t help that when you searched the name of the company, their site consisted of a bunch of glamour shots of women and looked more like an acting agency than a genuine dating portal.

My Boss Was Full of Red Flags

Although we were told to get women who looked like supermodels, we were also told to stay away from the ones who were obviously looking for a sugar daddy. The men were apparently respectable, although they needed to pay a service to find a wife. I recruited one European woman who actually was a gold digger looking for a green card, and she would leave me voicemail after voicemail.I had no problem asking people for their numbers as long as my paychecks were coming in the thousands, but eventually, the tide began to turn.Every now and then, when the owner was in town, we would all go out as a group. I learned from the other two recruiters that he had slept with both of them. I was thankful he never tried anything with me, but I was the only one with a boyfriend. I guess that made him sort of decent?One night out, after getting a round of drinks, my boss paid his tab and walked away from the bar. I opened the checkbook and noticed he tipped $6 on a $70 check. “Cheap prick,” I said as I threw a $10 bill down on top of the receipt. I made a mental note and wondered exactly what type of advice he was giving these “millionaires.” The only thing I ever heard him tell a client was, “Women in New York are cute, but women in L.A. are hot!”He had brought a girl that he was seeing out with him that night. She was only in her early 30s, but she looked as if she had a bunch of work done on her face. “Go kill yourself,” she started yelling to another girl at the bar. I had somehow walked into the middle of a catfight, and I had no idea why. This made me wonder if personality traits were even accounted for when these matches were made or if the woman’s headshot was the only thing of importance.The following day, I had a meeting with a few girls I had met while we were out. They never showed. This started happening more and more often. They either looked at the website and were not impressed or thought I was a scam artist. Another friend of a friend had an issue finding the office and took it as a sign that it was not meant to be. My other friends were still waiting for their phone calls.

I was a pimp.

My Conscience Finally Kicked In

I never met any of the men on the roster. It turned out most of these women were being set up on blind dates—however, since our clients were the ones paying for the service, they were given priority access to their photos. One friend of mine did end up going on a date with one of the men, and she said she was turned off after the second date because he was “ready to get married” and already seemed overly attached. I wasn’t a scam artist, though. I was a pimp. Everything about this company was designed to suit our clients’ needs and not the women we were setting them up with. The man was the millionaire, and the only prerequisite for finding the supposed love of their life was that she was “hot.” A better business venture would be to genuinely show men and women how to become more confident and approachable outside of their appearance. Building up women by acknowledging their skill sets and virtues was unnecessary, according to our boss, because after all, it was the men who would be taking care of them—as long as they looked like a trophy wife.I had to face the revolting fact that I was a pawn in the ongoing societal misconception that the man holds the power. I was getting paid precisely to continue this deceptive way of thinking. The job began to conflict with my ethics, and I had to resign.As bad as it was, I’m thankful for the experience. It’s made me question every job that I’ve taken since and given me the strength to quit when it became a matter of money over dignity—a bridge that I’ve crossed over and over again.Never sell yourself short. Money will come and go, but in the end, we’re only stuck with ourselves. A dirty business can give the facade of helping others, but we must know that at its core, it’s only about money, power and greed. And we don’t have to give in.

I’ve lived with fear beneath the surface for as long as I can remember. Stepping out the front door was a struggle, sitting and eating with others could be a burden and school was a constant battlefield. My days tessellated between lacking the compassionate strength needed to maintain friendships and not being able to dredge up the confidence to assert myself against bullies. Teachers pointing out my shortcomings only heightened my anxieties, putting distance between myself and others and leaving me lonely. But I have a new, more pressing anxiety, one that’s followed me into my 30s: that my 4-year-old daughter will experience the same. Some mornings, she doesn’t want to go to school, and sometimes coming home, she is tired and wired with anger or sadness. It would be easy to dismiss this as typical kid moods. But if I consider how she’s feeling through the memory of how school wore me down, it’s too close for comfort, and ignoring it feels like neglect.

This was the fear I’d known would take her one day.

My Young Daughter Was Clearly Exhibiting Anxiety Over School

One morning, the rising wave of some emotional turmoil inside her loomed to the breaking point. She was putting on her uniform, struggling with buttons. She wouldn’t let me help, and each refusal ramped up her frustration. I was losing patience because I wanted to get her out the door. My own anxiety commits acts of sabotage against my love for others and, sometimes, I shout at her before showing that I care about how she’s feeling. This was one of those times. She threw her toys and books around the room, screamed at me that she didn’t want to go, kicked me, told me she didn’t love me and lashed out in ways she already knew would hurt. In my own stressed-out state, I wrote her behavior off as a tantrum. But after nearly an hour of this, she was crying in a corner, hugging her knees and rocking herself back and forth. I realized the truth then: This was the fear I’d known would take her one day. After all, as the child of two people who both have a family history of mental illness, she was bound to be predisposed to it herself. When I realized she was terrified to face the day, I was ashamed of myself. I hadn’t let myself think about it, because letting others hurt is easier than facing the wounds anxiety has left in me. I know that fear too well.Sure enough, after letting her cry, cuddling her and wrapping her up in a blanket, she felt well enough to leave for school. I asked her then what had made her upset. She said she’d been scared of everything in the house. That morning showed me how crucial it is for me to step up and fight our anxiety for our family and, more importantly, fight it the right way. In my young years, life wasn’t allowed to stop a moment for a good cry or show of support. Being brushed off as a child is why I feel wounded by the experience of having anxiety; the illness ground away at me, but what broke me was going unrecognized as someone who was unwell and afraid most days. I know better since watching my little girl go into panic mode. I know the signs of distress I need to look out for, and I’ve successfully managed to avoid similar experiences by being mindful, trying my best to keep the reins on my snap responses and by having conversations with her about the reason behind a sad or grouchy mood. Sometimes, she doesn’t know the reason. If not, I make sure she knows that’s OK too.After feeling convinced for years that I had some kind of personality defect, I had to go to a doctor myself in adulthood to be diagnosed. I don’t want that for her. If she has anxiety, I at least want her to know that it won’t be allowed to gather cobwebs in her heart. If it’s there, we’re going to talk about it so she has the best possible tools to navigate it.

My Own Experience With Anxiety Allows Me to Understand What My Daughter Is Going Through

Hiding something under the floorboards does nothing to make it go away, and naming my illness has been half the healing for me. I wonder if knowing and accepting my anxiety and depression has been a direct path to understanding and loving myself as I do now. Practicing being present with where and why my anxieties lay went a long way toward my realization that I’m trans—again, well into adulthood. Before, the way I was taught to suppress my emotions left a mangled knot in my identity, which took pains to untangle. Because the connection between thoughts and feelings is closely intertwined in my personal experience of anxiety, I can now understand why a fear of my own emotions may have led to fear of deeper thoughts about who I was. Before I began to open up to my gender identity, I often felt like I had no identity at all. I thought my anxious avoidance of any kind of work or career moves had left me purposeless. This bled into every aspect of my life, including parenthood. There were days I wondered if my fear responses to emotion and responsibility would damage my daughter the same way I was.My mother had her own battles with depression, as well as being an NHS nurse and a single parent. She had it hard, and I couldn’t tell her I understood that before she died. But I can begin to heal those years by being aware of what they cost me and taking steps to make sure my history doesn’t repeat itself. When I cried from dread on school mornings or vomited in the assembly hall only to feel miraculously better on the way home, as my mother pointed out with no small amount of accusation, I was made to feel like I was creating difficulties for others on purpose. I was reprimanded by her and ridiculed by teachers for something I had no control over and couldn’t even name. The embarrassment of being ill in public, compounded by one of my teachers making a big show of being brought to nausea herself, thoroughly shut down any belief I might have had that it wasn’t my fault.

Naming my illness has been half the healing for me.

I’m Determined to Help My Daughter With Anxiety More Than My Parent Helped Me

The kind of silencing I went through only did more harm, so I do my best not to punish my daughter as a knee-jerk reaction to challenging behavior. If I feed on how I was neglected to intimidate her, I’m reducing myself to a bully and her to a victim. I need to break the cycle by learning to be open to signs that she’s calling out for help with something difficult for adults to articulate, let alone a 4-year-old.Life has granted me a supportive partner and work I enjoy, which leaves me plenty of heart space to support my daughter. Anxiety is the shadow of my empathic abilities, and I can see the same in her as she shows kindness to those who need it most. I might have had that caring instinct fractured, but I can still help the bright parts shine through in both of us. I’m determined not to let our love be buried in fear and ignorance. It’s still hard sometimes to take the pause to let her know I’m there for her. But when I do, she recognizes it, and I can see the gratitude in her eyes. She seems to take the strength from that to face another day with courage. In those moments, I’m proud of both of us and how far we can go together.

In January 2021, I could barely walk without becoming out of breath and sweating. Walking made my head hurt and I'd get intrusive thoughts, which were worsened by my fatigue. I hated walking. Leaving the house was not something I did often; since I wasn’t in work or education and was getting disability benefits, I didn’t have much need to go anywhere. After some encouragement from my dietician, who helped me to recover from an eating disorder, I started to go for walks around my neighborhood. I walked just 10 minutes most days, as that was my limit at the time. Turned left at the corner shop and looped the path back home. My legs and back ached as my muscles regained their strength, but it got easier after a couple of months, like pouring lubricant on neglected gears. 10 minutes became 15, then 20, then 40.

My stamina and motivation rapidly grew, and my social anxiety decreased.

Mental Health Respite Became a Side Effect of My Walks

While walking, I listened to a podcast about a group of people playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons. At the time, it was the only thing that made me happy (or at the very least vaguely amused. Thanks, anhedonia). I also looked for cats sitting in people's windows because I love them and I like to be surprised. This is called reward bundling, where you pair an activity you enjoy that is instantly gratifying with a behavior that provides delayed rewards (like good health), and it made walking a little bit more palatable.Since I'd been walking past a lot of houses, I saw some really beautiful ones and felt inspired to decorate my bedroom and then bought actual curtains instead of just having a blanket and tin foil over my window. It was an entertaining little project to look for furniture I wanted for a while, and it meant more walking at the shops because I don't like buying things online. Before, my room was bleak, with mold-spotted bedsheets I had used for four years. Due to my poor mental health, I struggled to do chores consistently for the past six years, but I started to take care of my flat again because I wanted it to look nicer. I got window film for the living room, and for the first time in the three years I'd lived in my flat, I kept the blinds open all day so I could see the film (it looked like stained glass), meaning I was exposed to a lot more sunlight when indoors. And we all know vitamin D is the best! Around six months after starting to walk regularly, I went out one day when the weather was unpleasant and it was very windy, which meant it was impossible to hear my podcast. But then I realized: I was still outside, despite not having those crutches. I could go out without needing a reward or distraction, and my thoughts were no longer as overwhelming (meditation helped too; I cried a lot during sessions, but it eventually stopped). My body scarcely sweated or felt sore, and my legs didn't chafe anymore.

Now I'm seen as the guy who's always busy, and I've collected experiences that can turn into stories.

Walking Brought Back My Pleasure for Life

In July, I went for a one-hour walk and stumbled upon a nature reserve. Since it was the middle of summer, nature was at its peak and beautiful. I came across lots of flowers, birds and even a couple of deer. This led to other long walks, like at the beach or in the city, and I wound up finding new shops since before I hadn't had the energy to look around properly. Exploring nearby towns became a hobby of sorts, although thanks again to the inescapable anhedonia that depression causes, this hobby felt like work due to the mental effort it took for me to leave town—and I would feel apathetic when I arrived in a new place, thinking that everywhere I went looked similar.However, I did seem to feel at peace while walking on a simple cycle path by the river, reminding me of a place I'd visited as a teen. I'd always had a love for nature, so that day, I wondered, why not join a gardening group? A week later, I started going to one that held meetings a couple of times a month, which meant I walked more and got a full-body workout while weeding. Plus, we donated vegetables to a food bank, which meant my work helped people. I learned that talking to others while doing a task actually helped me to socialize since I was less focused on what the other person might be thinking, and I appreciated that we weren’t pressured to fill any silences since we were all busy.That group inspired me to volunteer at a shop, which changed my life. I went from seeing people once a month to several times a week. My stamina and motivation rapidly grew, and my social anxiety decreased from repeated encounters with people. Chores became easier, and I began to think about the future and of my goals instead of living day to day.During one walk at a country park, I came across a trio of elderly walkers and asked to join them. We spent an hour together, talking and walking. Total strangers! I had intense social anxiety so this was a big deal for me. I'd also taken photos during this walk and decided to draw one of them, breaking an art block I'd had for months.Then, I started attending art workshops and drawing more things I'd seen on my walks. Sending these pictures and the photos to acquaintances is such an easy conversation starter, as are the activities I now go to. It's no wonder I had such a hard time talking to people: I didn't do anything at all and didn't have anything I wanted to share. But I don’t hold that against my past self; he simply didn’t have the energy for activities. Now I'm seen as the guy who's always busy, and I've collected experiences that can turn into stories.One thing led to another in a beautiful butterfly effect. Walking kick-started my recovery journey. Walking turned into an exploration of a new place, and exploration led to curiosity about what was down that mysterious dirt path.

Life in a pandemic is something that we have all navigated differently. I personally have been the super cautious friend. The friend who sits at a distance and refuses to go on nights out. The all-around party pooper. Now, that’s not to say that I haven’t wanted to make memories again, but my fear of infecting those closest to me is something that I just can’t shake off. But despite all of this, I am also somehow the friend who caught COVID—typical, right?

Despite all of this, I am also somehow the friend who caught COVID.

I Went Through a Whirlwind of Emotions After Testing Positive

I spent Christmas at home with my parents, visiting elderly relatives from a distance, all whilst watching the daily cases rocket on the evening news. I took a test before traveling back to uni, which, to my delight, showed only one red line. But a few days later, stuck between the four walls of my uni accommodation, a precautionary test showed that the previously single red line now had a friend. Positive. Suddenly, I was one of the statistics that I had been tracking on the news, and my first response was a wave of anxiety. Who had I been in contact with? Who had I put at risk? I just couldn’t bear the thought that I had been walking around potentially infecting others. And I also couldn’t bear the uncertainty of the effects that the virus might have. But then my next reaction was denial. I could still smell the awful jasmine-scented reed diffuser that I had put in my room a few weeks before—I really wished that I couldn’t! So if I could still smell, didn’t have a cough or temperature and could still taste my supermarket’s finest tortellini, could I really have COVID? Well, a follow-up PCR said yes, I could. So I was back at uni, stuck between four walls with the world passing by outside of my window and two bright red lines staring at me from my desk. My boyfriend was only going to be in the city for one week until he headed off for work, and I was going to be stuck indoors for at least that length of time and maybe more. It really wasn’t the ideal start to my time back at uni, and the thought of being alone for that length of time, potentially feeling unwell, filled me with dread. But whilst there was so little to do in a week of confinement, one thing that I definitely did was learn a lot about myself.

Even when things are tough, I continue to surprise myself.

While Quarantining, I Learned About Myself and My Values

Firstly, I learned that I like to overthink. Me? Overthink? Well maybe. From trying to calculate when I might have caught the virus and who I might have caught it from, to panicking that my housemates might catch it from me. I was wearing a mask in the shower, opening doors using paper towels and washing my hands before ever emerging from my room—wearing a mask, of course! It was an entirely exhausting process, but if nothing else, it made me realize just how much I care for others. Maybe a little too much sometimes. But everyone was fine in the end, so I guess being overcautious paid off. As for the calculations, they were a total waste of energy! With none of my recent contacts testing positive, there was no way that I could have ever pinpointed when and how I caught COVID.The second thing that my isolation experience taught me is that sometimes the sound of my own voice doesn’t quite cut it. There really is nothing quite like a good old catch-up when you’re not feeling on top of the world. As the days felt long and the boredom had set in, I tried to fill the silence with the sound of friends and family on the phone. Listening to the riveting updates that I was in my room, I was tired and I was still testing positive on a lateral flow presumably wasn’t a highlight of their day, but they listened anyway. They sent me treats in the mail, left cakes on my doorstep and streamed some questionable choices of movies for us to watch together online. It made me appreciate even more that I really am surrounded by the best people and, at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.The next thing that I learned during isolation is that I can, in fact, leave windows open. Huh? What a great achievement. A crucial personality trait of mine that I haven’t yet revealed is that I am terrified of spiders. Even hypnosis hasn’t helped me with that. So I really hate to leave windows open in case any eight-legged friends decide to take a vacation in my room. But with a desire for fresh air on my days stuck indoors, my windows were propped open. Now, that is an achievement in my eyes! And this kind of, although in a jovial sense, links with the final thing that I learned during isolation: Even when things are tough, I continue to surprise myself. The thought of being alone in a room for at least a week with the fear of infecting my housemates and the worry that I had already infected others was overwhelming, to say the least. But actually, my inner optimist made the best of the situation. Every day, I took control by making a plan. I sat at my desk and wrote out my goals for the day. Whether it was to finish reading a paper, finalize a chapter of my thesis or simply enjoy watching an episode of my latest favorite show on Netflix, adding structure to my day really made my time in solitude better. And despite gazing out of my window, enviously watching passersby and wishing that I, too, could enjoy a daily dose of fresh air, I read my way through isolation. I had a head start on a term’s worth of work, and I realized that the things that truly bring me joy are spending time with my nearest and dearest and exploring the world around me rather than being in one place. My time in isolation certainly was a rollercoaster of emotions but it was also an enlightening learning experience that I didn’t know I needed.

When my ex-husband asked for a divorce, we had been together—between dating and marriage—for 17 years. We started seeing each other at 18, and I grew up with his family as my own. His father officiated our wedding and told me after the ceremony that he thought of me as one of his biological daughters. His wife treated me the same. My own mother died when I was 24, and my mother-in-law gently filled in some gaps without ever attempting to take my own mom’s place. She was there for the birth of both my children and took care of me afterward when I was recovering from C-sections and too doped up to hold my children. We went on more than one trip just the two of us. We frequently had lunch. When the messy divorce process started, my soon-to-be ex was acting erratically. He told me and everyone else how happy he was to be able to go out and hook up again. He said he no longer had any interest in being sober and, in my presence, threw his 12-step book in the trash. His mood was unpredictable and often scary. He admitted to being suicidal, and I began to fear he was having some kind of psychotic break. I called my mother-in-law. I told her about how he was acting. I begged for her intervention. I didn’t want him living alone with my kids. She told me my concerns were unfounded. She was his mother and a psychologist who specializes in couples, so I told myself I was the one overreacting. I was the bad guy here, as he repeatedly insinuated. I thought I was paranoid. I agreed to shared custody.

I said goodbye.

I Made the Difficult Decision to End Our Relationship

After making it through the divorce process, his mood stabilized a bit once we each moved to our own places. At least I didn’t see any volatility, and my young children didn’t report any. He began dating his assistant, who helped him run his business and his life. I went to therapy and was diagnosed with complex PTSD and a panic disorder. I started taking medication and the past started making more sense. Through it all, I tried to keep a relationship with my now ex-mother-in-law. After all, she was still my kids’ grandmother. She told me she still cared about me, but when I talked to her, I felt her holding back. I couldn’t talk to her candidly—about everything from my husband’s addictions and infidelity, to our marriage communication issues to issues of parenting, friendship and the grief over my own mother’s passing—like I did when I was married. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything she knew about my life and how little concern she had about what I reported to her. By the time my marriage had been over for almost a year, I made a decision: I no longer had a mother, biological or otherwise. The anniversary of my mother’s death was in the beginning of May, a week before Mother’s Day. My ex-mother-in-law had been texting and calling me, asking when we could get together. She offered to take me out for a pedicure, lunch and to come play with the kids at my house. I’d been avoiding her and she was onto me. I scheduled a call. “You’ll always be my kids’ grandmother,” I told her, “but I need our relationship to end.”I’d never broken up with anyone before. “When I told you what was going on,” I said, “you didn’t believe me.”She talked about how when I’d come to her, she didn’t understand, which was why she didn’t do anything. I nodded as if it was a satisfactory answer, but it was another in a series of enabling excuses she made for her son. “You don’t want us to contact you anymore?” she asked, speaking for her husband, something she often did. “Not unless it’s about the kids,” I said. She began to cry. “I feel like I’m losing a daughter,” she said.“You are,” I said, letting myself cry in front of her for the first time since the divorce. And I said goodbye.

I Still Miss My Ex-Mother-in-Law

On Mother’s Day, my first as a single mom, I took my kids to the beach. We had an awful time. My daughter ran into the ocean with her clothes on and had a meltdown. My son wouldn’t go near the water, so I abandoned him on the sand to keep my daughter from drowning. He cried because he wasn’t having fun all alone in the sand. I bought cinnamon rolls, which were disgusting. I stripped the kids down to nothing in the back of my car, wrangled their sandy bodies into clean clothes and then we drove the hour and a half back home. We were in the car longer than on the beach. I got home exhausted and washed my filthy children, fed them and felt thoroughly sorry for myself. I found out later my ex, his girlfriend and his parents had spent Mother’s Day together at a garden. They’d been playing doubles pickleball. The girlfriend often had lunch with my mother-in-law. They probably got pedicures. They were planning a vacation together. How easy it was for her to find a new daughter, I thought, while I now was truly, for the first time, motherless. But I don’t want her. She told me for years to stay in a marriage in which I was being abused and mistreated. And she continues to make excuses for his behavior, his actions, his words, even when they are flung in her other children’s faces, her husband’s face or her own. I still miss her. I miss her so much—more than I miss her son. I still cry over the loss of her and my father-in-law, long after my tears for her son have stopped. I don’t know if there was ever a universe in which I got to keep them, but they did once promise me.

I miss her so much—more than I miss her son.

I’m Going to Raise My Kids Differently Than How My Ex-Mother-in-Law Did

In college, my ex was accused of sexual assault. Why didn’t I run? I believed him. Why? Because, while we sat outside his university hearing, my father-in-law called me a saint, joking I was good to stay. My mother-in-law said that if it came down to it, they’d choose and keep me instead of him. He was found “not responsible,” and I believed the ruling. I believed my in-laws—that I was good to stay, that it was the right thing to do, to stand by him, the wrongly accused. They called me a saint for years, and, as a non-religious person, it didn’t occur to me until after the marriage to question that saints become canonized when they die, losing themselves in the service of God. Their son was their god. They wanted me lost. I wrote her a letter I do not intend to send, which said, among other things: “I’m so mad at you. I miss you so much. I love you. I know you’re gone, though. You’re not my mom. You were never my mom. You’re his mom. I had a very good mom. She never would have left me if she had any control over it whatsoever. I was loved unconditionally. At least I have that.”I can’t have a mom, but I am a mom. I can be a mom who believes her children when they tell her they’re scared or hurt. When my children cause pain—because everyone makes mistakes at some point—I can help them repair the damage they’ve caused. I can tell them that helping is what makes them good, not believing they are right. So, while I still mourn my moms, I can learn from them, their mistakes and virtues. I’m not, nor do I want to be, a saint.

For over a decade, my family was at war with itself, stuck between a woman who would cry fake tears to try and elicit sympathy for “having her children taken from her,” when in reality, her children left because she was emotionally and physically abusive, and a man who our community saw as the villain because he came from a well-known family, who fought with all he had to make sure his children had a decent childhood. A few years after he divorced my birth mother, my dad married a wonderful woman who raised us, loved us and supported us like her own and who we now call Mom. In the end, after nearly 15 years of fighting to stay together, we finally won the war when the legal battle ended by default when we became legal adults and there was not much a judge could say about who got to “keep” us. Like in any war, though, there are emotional wounds that have remained long after the physical ones have disappeared.I’m the oldest of three children. I was always expected to set a good example, to look after and care for my siblings, to be the responsible, reliable child. As the oldest, I also had the privilege of being hurt the least by our mother’s actions. I was old enough to at least sort of process everything when her aggressions started, old enough to speak up and stand up for myself and my siblings and old enough to—politely; I was still in court, after all—tell her to go fuck herself and stop contacting me. I was the lucky one in this way, and while I’m happy that I got off this easy, I constantly feel guilty that my siblings—and my youngest brother, especially—did not.

The kid could do no wrong in our father’s eyes.

We're Doing My Brother a Disservice by Not Talking About Mental Health in My Family

My brother was a toddler when all of this started. He was the target of most of our mother’s attempts to “win” the lawsuit—because really, all she cared about was winning, not getting her children back. He was the one that suffered through forced visitation dates and would be constantly used as a pawn in a legal battle that, in theory, was meant to make sure he grew up healthy and happy. As a result of this, my father became overprotective of him. The kid could do no wrong in our father’s eyes. “He just needs me to take care of him in a different way than you do,” my dad would say. “He needs more attention. You don’t understand anything. Things were always the easiest for you!” I’m guessing this was my dad’s attempt to overcompensate and try to “balance out” the bad in his youngest son’s upbringing. No boundaries were ever set for him, no responsibilities, no expectations, no nothing. The feeling of unfairness that came from my brother getting off easier than my sister and I ever did was annoying, sure, but always something I could manage and deal with. Until it wasn’t.For most of his teens, my brother failed his classes, semester after semester. Where I had to work my ass off to keep a scholarship and deal with my dad’s constant pressure to “be my best self,” my brother would get a slap on the wrist in the form of a long sermon from my dad. He showed little to no interest in helping around the house, leaving my mom and me to deal with our pets, cleaning and laundry. Instead, he’d lock himself in his room and spend hours watching YouTube videos. He would have temper flare-ups that put all of us on edge. He’d scream, yell, punch and throw things around. Any attempt to calm him down would result in even louder yelling and even more things being thrown around. We had to wait for him to calm down on his own. My parents, my grandma and I would gather downstairs in the kitchen, listening to him slowly transition from yelling to crying loudly in his room. We’d look at each other, each of us visibly shaken from the adrenaline rush we’d just experienced. To say it was scary would be putting it mildly. Finally, a few years ago, he was diagnosed with depression and PTSD, and we finally had some clarity as to why he was feeling the way he was feeling and acting the way he was acting. There was a wave of relief when his therapist shared his results with my parents. (He was still a minor at the time.) We could help him!Except that mental health is not something we talk about in our family. While most of my family members have been diagnosed with one thing or another (I myself was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and generalized anxiety disorder in my early 20s), mental health is still somewhat of a taboo at home. It’s something that we are supposed to "learn to control" as we grow up. For years, we’d hear our parents and other adult relatives say things like, “Therapy is for crazy people” and, “I won’t tell a stranger everything about my life; dirty laundry is aired at home.” So when my brother’s diagnosis came around, he vehemently refused treatment—no meds, no counseling, no therapy, no nothing. For a couple of months, it seemed like he could handle himself, that things would be OK, and he wouldn’t really need treatment. Then, COVID turned everyone’s lives upside down. My family went from having busy schedules to being stuck inside our house 24/7.

COVID Lockdowns Exacerbated My Brother’s Depression and PTSD

Being confined hit my brother the hardest of all of us. His mood would be affected by the slightest disturbance. We began to walk on eggshells around him. Ask him to clean his room? Screaming and shouting. Ask him to help with our dogs’ dinner? One day, he’d gladly do it; the next, he’d get so angry, he’d break his closet doors. It was night after night of hearing him scream, insult and berate our parents. He’s never physically hurt me, or anyone else in our family, but he’s broken and damaged my things. One minute, he’d be screaming bloody murder; the next, he’d be asleep for hours. One minute, he’d be threatening us; the next, he’d be on the phone with some friend or another, laughing his ass off as if nothing had happened.I’ve become an emotional hostage in my own home. The place that was supposed to be my safe space is now plagued with trauma and fear. I can’t count the times my parents and I have had conversations about kicking him out, but they eventually decide against it. They say that despite him being in his early 20s, he’s not ready to be left to his own devices. Try as we might, we can't seem to get through to him and get him to accept treatment. We’re stuck—I’m stuck—somewhere in the middle of desperately wanting to help him and desperately wanting to live in peace, debating how much our family is supposed to tolerate in the name of unconditional love and support.I constantly find myself wondering if I’m an awful sister. I should do anything in my power to help him, shouldn’t I? That’s the way I was raised, after all: to put my siblings first because “they would be all I had left” when my parents were gone. (My dad’s words, not mine.) I understand where my brother is coming from, and I have no doubt that whatever pain and suffering I’m feeling, he’s probably feeling much worse.

We’re stuck—I’m stuck—somewhere in the middle of desperately wanting to help him and desperately wanting to live in peace.

I Need to Care for Myself Before I Can Care for Others

I'll admit, I sometimes feel like he's exaggerating his instability—or maybe even faking it—just to make us pay attention to him. He's actually admitted to wanting us to "know what it feels like" when we ask why he feels the need to act in such ways. I’m torn between feeling compassion and anger at my little brother for putting me through this. Am I an awful sister? I’m not really sure what the answer to that question is. Some days, I’m the worst, I think; some days, I’m OK. I want to be supportive, but I also need to take care of my own mental health. I'm struggling to find where the boundaries are.I’ve realized I can’t help anyone else if I don’t take care of myself. So, while I might feel guilty about it sometimes (I’m conflicted about even sharing this story now, but my hope is that putting whatever I’m feeling into words and giving it shape and order will help me process it a bit better), I’m starting to put my own needs first. Maybe the way I can set a good example and take good care of him is to take care of myself first. To heal myself first.

Keeping a secret is very similar to working out. Exercise with a few different weights and your body will eventually adjust to the set weight your regimen is centered on. Your body, too, will be used to the secret it holds, and eventually, the weight of your secret will be negligible. It should be no surprise, then, that when you decide to lift a barbell with weights that you aren’t quite used to yet that your arms will start to shake, the gym lights above you glaring into your forehead, the weight of the bar too heavy for you to hold. That a secret, much like a barbell, will eventually collapse back onto you, crushing you with the weight you were unable to live under. I have a secret. Not anything of an intense kind or the life-threatening kind. In fact, it’s so negligible that people who don’t understand wouldn’t bat an eye. People who do understand, however, will throw a fuss, as if I’ve shifted their worlds and the furniture on the ceiling is now my fault. I took off my hijab nearly six months ago after a decade of wearing it. And I feel free—that’s my secret. No one can know that. I’m not even allowed to say it out loud nor mention it—but I just did, and I’m angry that I have to do it anonymously. People will ask me, “How does it feel?” And I have to smile and say, “The usual, it’s fine.” That’s a lie; it kind of feels great, even amazing. And yet, I feel guilty even saying that.I’ve essentially pushed back the debate regarding hijabs by decades. Hijabs are a woman’s choice, and when it is their choice, it should be respected and acknowledged. My secret shouldn’t have this much value. In fact, my secret should be as mundane as my desire to have coffee at 7 a.m. It should be boring and uninteresting and entirely un-secret-like. But the world doesn’t want that. The world wishes for me to have this thought contained in my head like a lidless jar of water, holding on to every droplet escaping its brim. The world wishes that I be an anomaly because that would be easier than accepting that I live the truth of thousands of women, and there is no one that can know.

I feel free—that’s my secret.

I Feel Like I’m Confirming a Stereotype

Muslim women living in countries without a Muslim majority are fighting for the right to keep their hijabs on. Were I alien looking from afar at the politics and legislation of every country, the rise in poverty, homelessness and inaccessible education would seem rather concerning. The choice made by states to focus legislation on banning a piece of cloth that does not have much to do with anyone besides those wearing it would be somewhat astonishing. Were I an alien, I would be dumbfounded. As a not-alien, I am. It is due to this and the Islamophobic rhetoric existent throughout the West, which claims that Islam promotes women’s oppression and inequality, that I can never be honest. Were anyone to know how I felt, I would be validating toads such as Emmanuel Macron and Ben Shapiro. I would inadvertently be undoing the work of activists who have struggled for their right to wear what they wish and practice as they would. I am, unfortunately, the stereotype that many Muslim women are unwillingly made to wear a hijab or pressured to do so due to fear of retaliation, familial and societal pressure and patriarchal authority. Yet many of the patriarchal norms that exist in different global communities stem not from the religion but from interpretations of the Quran that best serve anyone (often men) who wishes to enforce rules and regulations on the behavior, attire and future of women. It is haram, forbidden, to force a woman to wear a hijab, just as it is haram to force anything on anyone. When I was 10, it became clear to me that in order to live peacefully, in order for the other older women in my family to live peacefully without facing constant insult for not forcing me to wear one, that I should. It became clear that donning one was the only way to maintain peace. Many of my cousins, my friends, my neighbors wear it not because they want to but because they must, and that is a sad reality we can never speak of for fear of setting back the rights of hundreds of other Muslim women. You might be wondering, why would the claims of one unknown woman do such a thing? Sometimes I wonder that, too, but the answer to that is only somewhat complex. It does not begin with 9/11, but that tragedy is a large part of it. It does not end with the movement to ban the hijab, but that, too, is a part of it.

I Don’t Want to Be the Representative for My Entire Community

I wasn’t born into the world with the desire to be an ambassador, but the world certainly changed that fairly quickly. It was the norm to be told to act appropriately, not because children should behave but because “the neighbors across the street might call the FBI on your father. You are a representation of every Muslim. Be nice. Don’t give them the wrong idea.” I didn’t understand who “them” was, but I quickly came to the realization that it was not me or anyone I was related to or anyone that sported a hijab. I, and every other Muslim in the United States, was different from my peers, and people would always believe so. In the wake of 9/11, the Muslim world (which does not only consist of the Middle East and North Africa) faced suspicion and distrust, with Muslims in countries without a Muslim majority facing the consequences of accusations of terrorism, suspicion, religiously motivated firings, social condemnation and social isolation. Suddenly, being a Muslim did not mean you were a person who practiced the religion of Islam; it meant that you were a representative of every other person who practiced Islam. The desire to “save” Muslim women only increased as countries such as the United States justified the War in Iraq through claims of spreading “freedom for the women in Iraq”. Putting aside the 70,418 civilian deaths associated with the war, many of which may have been women, the “saviorship” ideal did not remain within the military. In fact, it trickled into popular culture fairly quickly. Movies depicting Hijabi women being abused, like Submission, and shows where girls take off their hijabs and suddenly are “free,” like Elite, flooded the media, and my 10-year-old self was given the task of combatting each and every one of those stereotypes the day after 9/11.

I can finally find myself amid a life of peace.

I Feel More at Peace

The protection I was offered by a piece of cloth that held the weight of history was never understood by me until it was gone. Interactions I had with men were set to be friendly or professional. I had believed my hijab protected me from individuals thinking otherwise, but as I grew older, I realized nothing truly can protect you from the unwanted attention of men. I used to, however, when establishing my age wasn’t enough of a deterrent, say, “I’m Muslim,” and point to the hijab on my head. Men usually got the hint after saying that. Now whenever I speak to a man, it's as if everything I say carries a different weight. I say, “How are you?” and they hear, “I’m interested in you.” Yet despite the cost associated with the removal of protection, nothing could compare to the feeling of rain running down my scalp, the breeze of wind pushing strands of my hair forward and backward, the invisibility associated with fitting into the norm—it was as if I had shed what I used to be and stepped into a wider world of possibility. Perhaps that in itself is sad, that the cloth that I had donned could have, in any way, been limiting, but our culture has always reminded me that it was. There was no longer any hesitation when participating in sports, any reluctance when walking into a room with no other hijabis or any relentless staring in every public space I occupied. For many, being invisible is a horrid thing, but for me, I realized, it was freeing. It was like breathing pure air after wearing layers of masks, like the world had become brighter and more vivid while remaining entirely the same. I no longer represented millions of women or had to act in accordance with the established norms in place to represent culture rather than religion or live up to the expectations and visibility of being “that Hijabi” or “that girl with a hijab.” I had peace. Salam, the Arabic word meaning peace, is a greeting that also acts as a farewell. It is fitting then that as I bid my life as a Hijabi adieu, I can finally find myself amid a life of peace.

For years, autism was thought of as existing along one dimension, with those who can pass for integrated adults, at least superficially, on one end and the severely handicapped, unable to function without the same kind of supervision and care as a small child, on the other. In truth, even just getting this full one-dimensional spectrum to be considered as part of the autism experience often doesn’t happen. Depictions of autism are usually limited to the Bill Gateses and Temple Grandins of the world. These convenient reductions of the autistic experience fail on multiple levels. They offer an inherently romantic depiction of what it means to be autistic that doesn’t gel with the countless experiences of those whose autism manifests in ways that make it harder for them to adapt to social environments the way these convenient examples were able to. This is to say nothing of the lack of resources and support structure—especially relative to these famous inspirational stories—that those with autism have had to contend with for decades. (And to say nothing of the fact that Bill Gates is most likely not actually autistic; a handful of social quirks are not remotely sufficient to categorize a man or woman as having this atypical way of thinking.) Modern culture has frequently failed to even sufficiently include this one-dimensional depiction of autism, as inadequate as it is, without trivializing it as a superpower or treating it as a death sentence for the hope of a functional life.

Modern culture has frequently failed to even sufficiently include this one-dimensional depiction of autism, as inadequate as it is, without trivializing it as a superpower or treating it as a death sentence for the hope of a functional life.

My Autistic Journey

Autism for me manifested first in perhaps the most common—indeed, one might say the tritest and cliche—manner: through delayed language development. I wasn’t able to speak in coherent sentences until age 6, and this was after several years of consistent, focused work with a speech specialist. I was placed in a special school for autistic kids and then eventually considered “high functioning” enough to be taken out of it. I had an inherent ability to understand logical, scientific and mathematical reasoning and wasn’t cognitively impaired to the point where I needed the same level of care as a preteen and teen as I had as a 4-year-old. I had enough ability to focus for one class period at a time to make being in mainstream classes feasible (with the help of specialists in grade school and moving on without them starting in middle school). One could argue the severity in which my inhibitions showed themselves wasn’t enough to qualify me as “low functioning” and perhaps even placed me in a position on the autism wheel that suggests I could function at the same level as neurotypicals in most facets of life. Therein lies the distinct and pernicious problem with the conditions I was born with: Underneath this perception were some truly severe crises that went unnoticed, for a variety of reasons.I wasn’t able to speak in complete, coherent sentences or, for that matter, communicate my needs through body language, facial expressions or any other meaningful manner such that I could be readily understood. For reasons I’m still not quite sure of, efforts to improve this fell by the wayside until my graduate school years. I would experience muscle spasms—designated as “tweaking” by observers—and feel the need to run in circles because my brain was a wild, uncontrollable animal, perhaps a stallion or even a bull. I had a hard time regulating my emotions and was blasted with anxiety and depression on a regular basis. What may have been worst of all was that my ability to adapt was strongly dependent on having a firm and guiding structure laid out for me, knowing what tasks and projects to work on and what aspects of myself needed to be developed. Primary and secondary school laid these all out for me. Once that structure was removed, as was the case in my college years, I was a house of cards on a shaky table; the rumbling got strong enough to blow it over and I was hit with breakdown after breakdown of anxiety and depression. I experienced life as a role-playing game, where everyone else but me had instruction manuals, and I was playing as a character with double the handicaps of the rest of the players. I somehow made it through college and earned a graduate degree. My skills, possibly due in part to my autism, were able to get me into exciting research and discoveries. But the handicaps made advancing further in my work overwhelming, to the point where I needed a set of specialists, much like I did in grade school.

The Autistic Spectrum Isn’t Enough to Describe the Autistic Experience

A standard spectrum-based analysis of autism is essentially centered on the separation into “high-functioning” and “low-functioning” ends. In simple terms, “high functioning” refers to those who can, by their adult years, speak intelligibly and live without the daily supervised care a small child needs; “low functioning” refers to those who can’t. This binary is inherently severely limiting. Those who fit the form of “high functioning” are regularly grouped alongside such famous figures as Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Temple Grandin, Mark Twain, Dan Aykroyd and Anthony Hopkins. This can lead to their unique needs and struggles—from communication to keeping composure in working environments to being able to understand what is needed to live fully independently—to be ignored. Often, this is because it is presumed, without truly looking at their situation in an individualistic manner, that their experiences will continue to evolve in the same manner as the aforementioned autistic figures, some of who may in fact have been given the autism label, even a “high-functioning” one, erroneously based on a handful of social quirks. Gates is perhaps the most notable example of this.Because I was “high functioning,” any one-dimensional attempt to depict autism invariably would lead to me being classified as perfectly typical, able to function without the support structure neurotypicals don’t need. And it assumed that I could progress in my professional and personal development using yardsticks designed for said neurotypical people. Both of which turned out to be tragically inaccurate. To be sure, comparing oneself to others as a pattern of thinking is highly ill-advised. Trying to do this based on a spectrum analysis of autism would prove to be disastrous. A better way of visualizing autism is as a wheel. The wheel takes a list of the various characteristics of autism—the difficulties with speech pathology and language, the tics and spasms, the anxiety and depression, the cognitive processing abilities, difficulty adapting to social situations, eye contact, sensitivity to loud noises, lights or touch and ability to focus on tasks for extended periods of time—and converts them into the wheel’s spokes. For each trait, the further away from the tire the person’s attribute on the spoke is, the stronger the given attribute manifests in them. This allows for much wider nuance relative to a standard spectrum. And in the case of those who are given the “high-functioning” label, it can be drastically more needed in order to understand why social expectations placed on those conveniently given that label can, in fact, be thoroughly unrealistic.An autism wheel is particularly vital because it allows for the incorporation of a plethora of experiences, strife, successes, anguishes, turmoil, joys, trials and tribulations that binary depictions of “high” and “low” functioning could never hope to capture. By placing these aspects on a wheel, one can look at two individuals with autism who are equally “high functioning” or “low functioning” and recognize that the struggles of one—not to mention their ability to adapt to cultures that are unable and/or unwilling to meet them halfway—can differ from the other. In this manner, issues that affect those with autism as a population can be observed and the proper cultural changes to recognize and assist as much as possible with their struggles can, at least in theory, start to be implemented.

A better way of visualizing autism is as a wheel.

Each Autistic Person’s Experience Is Unique

That said, even an autistic wheel won’t be wholly sufficient in depicting the autistic experience when one is looking to evaluate it one individual at a time. While studies of those with autism as a population can be especially helpful when looking at social changes, they must be complemented with the ability to evaluate autistic individuals. Two people with autism occupying even the same position on an autism wheel can still have distinctly different life stories and struggles. Sensitivity to noise perception, speech difficulties, difficulties with focusing on one topic for extended periods of time—each of these aspects can manifest itself in a myriad of ways. Even the wheel, therefore, will have its limitations; if we hoped to truly capture the autistic experience, it would need literally hundreds of segments placed around it. Obviously, trying to visualize the entire autism spectrum in this way would eventually be too impractical. With autism, we eventually must understand that meeting one man, woman or child with autism means we’ve met one man, woman or child with autism; nothing less or more. This explains inherent problems with media depictions of autism as well. The need to study autistic populations can (and has) led to improvements in depicting the unique challenges and ways autism adds to society, for better or worse. In spite of this, any attempts at depiction, from Rain Man to Temple Grandin to Sheldon Cooper to Sam Gardner, have to be understood as depicting one and only one individual with autism. Otherwise, those in charge of producing viable depictions of autism, from news to movies and TV to novels to video games, find themselves criticized for denigrating and stereotyping those with autism, regardless of the effort they make to do justice to neurodivergency.The wheel depiction would in essence show that I, along with others easily designated as “high functioning,” would have difficulty adapting to social situations, understanding how to carve out viable careers and just figuring out life in general. Even in my case, though, the wheel depiction would not be adequate by itself, particularly when it comes to explaining why my uphill battles were unique when support structures I was used to ceased to exist. There will inherently be a need to supplement the wheel with individualistic analysis of autism and to approach existing stories of autism—the successes, crises, setbacks and triumphs—with an understanding of their limits.

I slid into the booth beside my friend at the high school cafeteria. Another student joined us, a girl I'd only met briefly in history class. I lifted a spoonful of applesauce to my mouth, and the girl's eyes widened. "Oh my god, what happened to your fingers?" Looking down, I saw the blood pooling around two of my cuticles. Instinctively, I dropped my hands to my lap and curled my red-stained fingers into my palm. "It's nothing," I said. "Just a paper cut."This wasn't a first for me. I'd been chewing my cuticles for as long as I could remember. Maybe because I was a shy, insecure child. I was convinced that I was the only kid on the planet who had the weird habit of gnawing on my own skin. And, of course, those assumptions only compounded my sense of self-loathing. My family joked about my "bad habit"—one that I shared with both my mother and older sister at home. Mom nibbled on her nails whenever she watched television or read a book. My sister often picked the heels of her feet when we stayed up late to chat about boyfriends and school. I was comfortable walking around the house with my fingertips raw and sore, but in public, I felt tremendous shame for what I considered a gross habit and an inability to control it. It was my dirty little secret during a time when peer pressure to fit in was paramount. Yet no matter how much I wanted to be visible on campus, I couldn't stop the compulsion to gnaw on my skin, leaving it bloody, discolored and, at times, infected. I adapted by wearing clothes that had pockets to hide my hands, and I was always careful to keep my fingers curled under with the thumbs tucked in. However, if I forgot and accidentally allowed my hands to be seen, someone would inevitably grab my fingers and ask what happened. So I got really good at lying about it—“I accidentally cut myself while cooking,” “The cat scratched me,” or, “My fingers got scraped up while I was working in the garden.” This was easy enough to do, but it also interfered with simple day-to-day actions such as shaking someone's hand, holding utensils, eating, checking my phone or tapping away on my laptop.

I pick and chew my cuticles to relieve stress or simply to soothe myself when I'm bored, anxious, angry or hungry.

I’m Uncomfortable Thinking of This as a Disorder

The stigma surrounding OCD behavior made me feel shame and embarrassment about my hands until recently, when I learned that there was a name for my compulsion, and I have mixed feelings about this. It's a relief to know that I'm not the only one with this distressing habit, but also, labeling it as a disorder just adds to the growing list of other disorders on my plate (anxiety, depression, phobias, etc.). The condition is called dermatophagia (compulsive biting and chewing of the skin, especially around the fingers), and it's a relatively new concept in the mental health field. Classified as body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB), it is related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. There are multiple causes for the behavior, including genetics, physical disorders, hormones or psychological issues. Interestingly, it's also more prevalent among females, beginning around puberty. Dermatophagia, dermatillomania (skin picking) and trichotillomania (hair-pulling) fall under the same umbrella of BFRB and OCD. Each is a form of self-mutilation but an unintentional one. I pick and chew my cuticles to relieve stress or simply to soothe myself when I'm bored, anxious, angry or hungry. Most of the time, though, I'm not even aware that I'm doing it until I feel pain around the nail and my cuticles turn bloody. I've been doing this for so long that the tissue damage has affected my nail growth, leaving them thin, brittle and bumpy. I've tried many tricks to stop the behavior—nail polish, topical ointments, wearing rubber gloves around the house and even covering my fingertips with Band-Aids when I'm out in public. Since much of this behavior is linked to OCD, doctors usually recommend cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as habit reversal training. There is also a bevy of medication designed to treat anxiety and depression. Supposedly, they help control the impulse to bite and pick. But for me, these are only temporary measures. The temptation to nibble exceeds the pain and embarrassment of torn cuticles. The compulsion is even stronger when I'm anxious or trying to lose weight—I soothe myself by chewing my fingers rather than loading up on fattening comfort food. Mostly, I gnaw on my cuticles while I'm watching television—just like my mother did. Unfortunately, my adult kids inherited my OCD behaviors. They grew up watching me mirroring my mother's habit, and now, two of my kids bite their cuticles, one knots and pulls out her hair and the other picks the skin on his arms and legs until it bleeds. Luckily, we can joke about it, and my kids know they're not alone dealing with this kind of compulsive behavior. In fact, we can always tell one another's current mood by the condition of our skin. When my daughter catches me chewing at my cuticles, she asks, "OK, Mom, what's bugging you?" My kids are used to seeing me with fingers that look like small rodents have been gnawing on them.

There is even a nickname in the mental health community for people like me: wolf biter.

I’m Glad to Know I’m Not Alone

It's ironic how nail-biting is socially acceptable as a means of coping with stress, but biting the skin around the nail until it bleeds? Not so much. People who don't understand the compulsion find it weird and disgusting. There is even a nickname in the mental health community for people like me: wolf biter. The nickname was given because of the way wolves eat, tearing at flesh one piece at a time. Gross, I know, but oddly, I prefer this term over being labeled as a person with a psychological disorder. Sadly, there is no cure for dermatophagia, although some say acupuncture, meditation and hypnosis helps. I have yet to explore these options, but until then, I need to figure out the root cause of my behavior and understand why chewing and picking pacify me.Now that I know there are many others just like me—wolves in a pack—I've come to accept my condition. Of course, I'll continue to work at keeping my fingers as chew-free as possible, but I also know how difficult this habit is to break because it can never be truly broken. And I'm okay with that—as long as this wolf biter doesn't start howling at the moon.