The Doe’s Latest Stories

I think what attracted me to doing hair was vanity and glamour. Being a young queer kid in Texas, style and fashion and hair were just something that I was drawn to—doing my own hair and my friends’ hair and obsessing over my sister, who is obsessed with her beauty and her glamour. My mom was the same way. In high school, I was weird, I was the freak, so I just always did my own hair and had every color, every cut you could think of. I was supposed to go into journalism or graphic design, but once I accepted that I was queer—and being the queer son that's also a hairstylist—then I was like, “Okay, I'm gonna do this.” And I didn’t feel pressure doing hair. So I knew right out of high school that it was what I wanted to do. I'm 26 years old, and I've been doing hair since I moved to New York when I was 19. My style and philosophy are all about what's realistic. People come to me for haircuts that are very wearable, that they don't have to think about too much. New Yorkers don’t want to do their hair every day. They want to shake it and go, and they want to not worry about it. Maybe a little product. I've built a clientele that doesn't care about a blowout or about their hair being perfect or overly stylized. I've curated a style that is very wearable and realistic. It's beachy texture, it's embracing the curls, it's not convincing the hair to do something that it can't do if I'm not there. It's just using what it is and making that work.

You truly have to love it to keep going.

You Have to Love Fashion to Put Up With the Experience of Working in It

I'm definitely an extrovert, so I think my clients truly enjoy getting their hair cut by me because I love to listen. I also love to interact and give my drama back as well. I feel like it's mostly like a hangout session when we're together. I genuinely enjoy seeing these people over and over again. They become my friends. And being a New Yorker, I see them wherever I go, whether it’s at 4 p.m. or 4 a.m.I take private clients in my studio three to four days a week, which gives me lots of joy. I also work in fashion, and my studio clients give me the stability to enjoy it as a hobby or a passion. I can create work with my friends and just kind of pick and choose who I want to work with. I'm not selling out to fashion or selling my soul to it. When I was in beauty school, this man came to teach at this random salon in Austin, and I showed up to his class uninvited. I thought he was really fab, and then at the end, he was like, “You seem really cool. What are you doing here?” And then he basically offered me a job in New York. He did education, so I learned a lot of my foundation through a curriculum that I had to help him teach.Working in fashion can be so inspiring and fulfilling and exciting. It can also be very defeating. There's no manual, nothing's promised, and when you start, you don't really know how to go about it. There are some people who can do it safely as a passion because they come from money and they have something to fall back on. For people that don't have that, fashion’s a more long, winding road. You truly have to love it to keep going.

Working With Friends Beats Working With Celebrities

If a friend is working on something and think the job is right for me, they’ll loop me in and send me an email. That’s how I find a lot of my work. Or else people see my Instagram and send me an email or DM. The first step of the process is seeing if there's a budget or rate for what you do, which oftentimes there isn't. You kind of have to pick and choose what jobs you say yes to. If it's with my friends and if it's a low budget, then I'll be okay with that because I know it’ll be a great shoot, and I'll probably make great work that I'll be proud of. But if it's a low budget with a team I'm not too inspired by or someone I don't really vibe with as far as their aesthetics or vision, then often I'll pass it up. I’ll ask for the hair brief to see if I’m even capable of doing the hair, and if I am, then I will confirm the shoot. If I confirm it, then I have to go and figure out, do I need a wig? Do I need five? Do I need extensions? On-set is usually early call times and very, very long hours. On-set days, I usually just accept that I could be there forever and just wait it out. But most of the time, it goes by fast because I'm usually having fun. I’ve worked with a lot of famous people, usually as an assistant to a lead hairstylist. I’ve always felt like it put me in a weird place with celebrities. Because if you're not the main hairstylist, it often feels like you shouldn't talk or have a personality. Or sometimes it feels like you're the help, to be honest. And then there are celebrities who actually see you and are kind. And then there are celebrities who act like they see you the whole time, and then the moment you're in their shot, they'll perk up and be rude. I was just working with this British pop star for a long time and she was always very chill and nice to me. Then one day she was getting her makeup done by a famous makeup artist who wanted to take her photo, and the moment they tried to take it, she swatted my hand away and asked me quite rudely to move. It kind of gave me the feeling of being the help. After that, I just didn't give a fuck about her or about doing my best job, to be honest. One of my favorite celebrity stories was washing Yoko Ono’s hair in her bathtub, which was really crazy. She was extremely, extremely sweet. Because she's quite old too, she doesn't like to go out to get her hair done. Her assistants were just like, “We have this chair in the bathroom that she leans back in and you're just gonna have to roll your pants up and wash her hair.” And I was like, “Okay.” So I'm literally just massaging Yoko Ono's head in her bathtub with my pants rolled up. And she was probably the nicest person I've ever worked for. She was very grateful, and she tipped me like $500, which was amazing.

I just didn't give a fuck about her or about doing my best job.

I’m Making the Changes I Want to See

Like I said before, there's no way to learn how to do fashion besides just jumping in and seeing how it works. I think it takes many, many years to realize how fashion works and how to go about it. I was still a teenager when I got into it, clearly very naive, and I would do anything for a paycheck, which is as bad as it sounds. I was dealing with lots of horrible men—straight or gay cis white men—and I think it did a lot of damage to me at the beginning when I was learning. I was putting my happiness in jeopardy and even safety sometimes. Fashion is changing for the better now. Even just five years ago, there was no accountability the way that there is now. I had to experience things that probably shouldn't have happened: being treated poorly as an assistant, being preyed upon, being manipulated by people who were more successful than me. Along the way, I've had pretty bad experiences with working for people and trying to create space for myself. But now, I'm building my own world. I don't expect much from anyone anymore. I'm making fashion make more sense for me, rather than trying to fit myself into it.A lot of my friends are models, photographers, stylists and makeup artists, and right now what keeps me going is being able to grow with them, to see all of us become successful together and create work together that is seamless and beautiful. Seeing your friends become successful along your side is so inspiring. Creating something from nothing and seeing it get bigger and bigger and bigger feels like enough reason to be doing that kind of work. For me, fashion is about building my community versus trying to change the industry. It starts with us just doing things the way we want to do and treating each other and our systems the way they should be and trusting that the energy is contagious.

I’ve always been a bigger girl. I came out of the womb just shy of 9 pounds. That’s a normal birth weight, but my mom still argues that I was a large infant. From preschool all throughout high school, I was one of the tallest in my class for all genders. I have childhood memories of being put on diets and running on treadmills. I remember the embarrassment of being a 10-year-old getting a letter from their doctor saying that they need to lose weight. The shame imposed around eating. The humiliation of not being able to fit the largest sizes in stores like Hollister and Aeropostale during a time when you were judged for not having the trending brands. As you can imagine, this really thwarted the way I viewed myself. As I grew up, I began dressing more masculinely, simply because men’s clothing seemed to fit me better. (I still feel that way about the pants.) I want to say that my self-confidence began to take a dive, but that wouldn’t be accurate—my self-confidence wasn’t there to begin with.

My self-confidence wasn’t there to begin with.

My Self-Confidence Started Out Low and Only Got Lower

I left high school in 2017 at 5 feet, 10 inches, 256 pounds and a size 18-20. I refused to get senior pictures taken because I didn’t feel as though I had accomplished anything, and there was no way I wanted to see any pictures of myself. My own graduation photos made me want to cry, which signified the lowest point of my self-confidence, but also led to a new era in my life. In the months that followed, I cycled between intense dieting and bulimia, losing 60 pounds in five months. At 196 pounds, wearing a size 14-16, I had reached the lowest weight I’d been since middle school, and I felt amazing. I thought I felt like me again. I finally felt confident enough to post my makeup looks on social media, and I actually enjoyed taking the photos and seeing myself. I loved being creative and the entire editing process, which I now see as the foundation that started my modeling career.Fast forward two years later to May 2019, and I’ve gained 20 pounds back after spending months hyperfocusing on the fashion industry in an attempt to amplify my photography game. At this point, I had spent thousands of dollars on Vogue magazines and everything I needed to be a makeup artist, professional photographer and designer, while ignoring most of my school responsibilities. I was in a hypomanic state, although I didn’t realize it at the time. Hypomania, often associated with bipolar II disorder, is, according to MedicineNet, “A condition similar to mania but less severe. The symptoms are similar with elevated mood, increased activity, decreased need for sleep, grandiosity, racing thoughts and the like.” While I wasn’t diagnosed with bipolar II disorder until this year, these moments are my first vivid memories of hypomania. These are also the moments that brought me to where I am today.

I Never Expected to Be a Model Until I Became One

Just like every other hypomanic state, this one had to end, and eventually, it did. While I was still interested in makeup, photography and designing, it was the modeling industry that now had my attention. I applied to over 70 different modeling agencies around the world and received only three callbacks. Fortunately, that was all I needed.On August 6, 2019, I signed to a modeling agency and entered a world I did not anticipate. In the modeling industry, an agency signs you based on how strongly they believe they can market you. That requires agents who can see the potential in your image and develop it. For many of us models, that includes changing our current look, which can mean size changes, hairstyle changes, dental procedures, tattoo removal or simply just toning up at the gym. I had done my research on the scouting process during my deep dive researching the modeling industry, so I already expected that I would have to make drastic changes specifically geared towards my weight. Baby, was I wrong! My new agent wanted me to change my natural hair—I had applied with photos of me in a worn-out, shoulder-length wig, since I hadn’t seen many curve models with natural hair—and he wanted me to change my weight, but not in the way you might expect. He wanted me to gain weight (or in his words, “tone up”). In fact, after gaining the COVID 19 (pounds, that is), I was almost afraid to share how much weight I had gained. But as he read off my measurements (45 bust, 38 waist, 50 hips), he exclaimed with joy. I was so confused. Here I was, feeling hesitant about having my measurements read aloud—only for them to be celebrated? “Okay,” I thought, “So maybe the voice in my head that’s telling me all of these negative things about myself isn’t right.” This was the start of a new realization and a major shift in my mindset. I began to realize that the things I once perceived as issues or flaws within myself were actually the things that could be celebrated and have become crucial to my current look and success.

I began to realize that the things I once perceived as issues or flaws within myself were actually the things that could be celebrated.

There’s More Than One Way to Be Beautiful

Moments where I’m reminded how irrational my insecurities are have continued to occur. The proof for me is in clients wanting to book me for those very things I tried to hide. There’s nothing like getting paid to reaffirm the beauty in those traits. I must admit that while I’ve worked for multiple household name brands and magazines, those jobs aren’t what fully drove that lesson home for me. It was seeing my curve model sisters going through the same thing and experiencing success. Incredibly beautiful women of diverse measurements, struggling to see their own beauty because they don’t look how we’ve been told we need to look. I see them fight to come to terms with actually being a model because they don’t think they fit the description—only for them to book a job and be shown that they are a beauty standard. I always say that we are our biggest critics, and working in the industry that basically defines how we as a society view beauty confirmed that for me. If my perceived flaws are bringing me success in the beauty industry, then are they really flaws? By making this connection and taking on that mindset, I realized that I could not trust the voice in my head telling me that my authentic self was not good enough. I had convinced myself that I wasn’t enough. Period. To my surprise, the fashion industry has changed that. I think that is indicative of how far the beauty/fashion industry has come. While it’s still not perfect, we’re moving towards a place that celebrates individual and diverse beauty. That’s the message future generations will receive, and I'm grateful to help share it.

So something strange happened to me as I was getting dressed today. I realized that slavery was a big cotton industry giant, and we might be continuing a cursed tradition by wearing cotton today. Have we been programmed by Fruit of the Loom commercials? Did the industry clear up its trail of blood to assure us we have not been purchasing materials from a plantation?Before I go bashing the fashion industry, let me say this first: There is no fault in wanting clothing you enjoy. I am more concerned about how much hate and death we as Americans have endured. Can America recover if we do not examine? Only time will tell. I do not want to make this a history lesson. However, we need to be aware of the fact that there are many wrongs that have not been corrected. The first clothes in history were made of animal skins, grass, wool, bones and shells. When human beings decided to wear cotton, it was through deliberate means. In Europe, and Britain specifically, there was a huge demand. They were importing it from everywhere. But cotton clothing became popular at the expense of the people who made it. This has been the case since the East India Company in the 1600s. So I ask myself why, after all these years, is there no alternative?

Cotton clothing became popular at the expense of the people who made it.

Is Today’s Cotton Industry a Continuation of Cotton Slavery?

Fast-forward to this present century, and the cotton industry is still thriving more than ever. When we wear clothing, we do not really check to see the material it is made from. We have been fooled into paying for the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors just to look and feel cool. Before slavery was abolished, we barely had a chance to set proper intentions on the multibillion-dollar industry. We have had questions about what reparations there would be for the descendants of those slaves, but they've never come to fruition. Can we start now? How do you wrap your imagination around the number of people who died in those cotton fields? Are those cotton fields still being used today, producing bigger yields at a rapid pace with technological help? How about all the time that slaves were free but had no idea? Since there was no social media back then, or even television for that matter, there were plantation owners who completely disregarded the Emancipation Proclamation and forced slaves to keep working. I mean, even if the newspaper came to the plantation, the enslaved people couldn’t even read it. How much more cotton was produced by slavery, even after slavery was abolished? The biggest question to me is: Why would an industry built on hate still have a place in our future? If we choose to stop now, will that show people we need to take the matter seriously? To all of my freedom fighters and leaders of the new world, do you wear cotton? Did the great Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X have a bunch of cotton clothing? If so, did they feel bad or even think about it? I try to imagine myself in their shoes. Their intentions were pure and progressive. Did they have time to think about their clothing?

Did they have time to think about their clothing?

I’m Freeing Myself From Cotton’s Dirty History

I recently examined my whole closet and realized that more than half of my clothes were cotton. I immediately started to rip those pieces from the once-satisfying wardrobe I created. Here lies no more guilt. I make my ancestors proud by taking what I desire into my own hands. They literally cut themselves on thorns each time they picked cotton balls from the plant. Cotton balls! Do the fashion industry and the beauty industry have some explaining to do? We see cotton balls in nail shops. We see cotton at the dentist. There is no escaping! I truly believe I am doing the right thing. As I pluck out the last black cotton shirt I own, I remember all the times I wore it without regard. I used to work in a restaurant, so wearing a black shirt has always been my thing. I tie the bag of clothes up and stare deeply at it. How can I begin to correct these mistakes? What will my alternatives become? I have seen breathable and biodegradable hemp material. Maybe that can be a first step toward our redemption. One thing I know for sure is that someone needs to make sure that the fashion industry stops creating clothing with cotton. Until we do right by our ancestors and break away from it, we will see no change. Join me in liberation. Liberate yourself from the past. Protest with me in the world we love and live in. Ban cotton from being continuously used in our country. Then we’ll see what changes we can make in the world. Rise up, my people!

Slipping into shoes other than my go-to casual sneakers has been a rare sensation as of late. Heck, seeing anyone do the same has been, too. When I watched Rihanna bounce confidently into an L.A. grocery store in March this year in towering heels, along with a designer mini fit, Versace sunnies and a neon green face mask to match, it was almost too much to take. I was glad to see the style queen return to form. Witnessing more and more moments of people enthusiastically dressing up again signified something deeper to me. It got me buzzing, especially since lockdown reared its ugly head.This past year, the fun approach to fashion got lost in the serious concerns of the pandemic, and I’ve missed it. As restrictions ease and we find purpose in being presentable again, some have returned to showy stylings outside of the house. But while some might have favored the switch from suits to sweats in March 2020, for me, being confined to home for endless months (with no need to fix myself up to go anywhere) left me with a sense of lost identity. I fell deeper into the cycle of putting on a hoodie for the next errand run, and my mourning got heavier as I tried to remember the essence of who I was before this pandemic began.

I felt guilty even directing worry toward the industry as people were, if not dying, getting seriously ill.

I Missed the Creativity and Self-Fulfillment of Fashion

This past year, the enthusiasm to put on a presentable outfit was dampened by not only the removal of social engagements but job losses brought on by businesses shuttering in lockdown. Aside from work uniforms, the detachment of purpose from ensembles altogether in the earlier period of the pandemic made fashion suddenly a foreign interest and ultimately seem pointless even to me, someone who has worked in the industry as a copywriter and journalist for many years. Considering my innate love for fashion, I was concerned with my initial detachment and for the industry itself, as shows and collections stopped and design schools shut down, crushing students’ routes to career success.It just felt like there wasn’t a place for it all in the midst of the pandemic’s chaos, and I felt guilty even directing worry toward the industry as people were, if not dying, getting seriously ill. In this general rejection of fashion that occurred, it became simplified as superficial, which made sense. Certain aspects of it are. However, I realized this was not the part of fashion I missed—it was the creativity and personalization behind it. These factors fuel the element of style, which has led me, along with countless others, to discover our identities and find true self-fulfillment. Here lies the difference between happiness and depression for some, and in more dramatic cases, life and death. Losing grip on self-identity can be detrimental to mental health, which I discovered battling this throughout lockdown. For many working from home, the temptation to live in sweatpants never sat well with me. My mood was tied to how I dressed, and so, having worked from home since before the pandemic as a freelancer, I made sure to dress presentably in my routine—visiting the gym, attending meetings or working in the coffee shop. With all these appointments wiped away by restrictions, I succumbed to wearing joggers like everybody else, letting a melancholy steadily arise within me as my proactiveness waned. Paired with not seeing people parade their personal styles out on the way to somewhere, I was left feeling uninspired and stagnant creatively.

It should really be about how it makes me feel and how I identify with myself.

Fashion Holds a Sense of Discovery That I Never Want to Neglect

There’s an energy in expressing style that people draw from, that boosts positive attitude. Through style—defined as a unique way of arranging one’s appearance—we seek references of individuality that inspires an inner confidence I’ve long been chasing. Rihanna emotes this best, taking to the streets unapologetically dressed, as she establishes looks that aren’t subservient to trends or people’s opinions of what’s “hot.” Seeing her strut into that grocery store not long ago reminded me how I’d neglected my own sense of style, associating it with an occasion or destination, when it should really be about how it makes me feel and how I identify with myself.For some, it might not be an important part of life—irrelevant, even. I even thought I was supposed to consider it meaningless during this pandemic. It’s perhaps why I’ve felt so low at times, casting aside something of personal value to me. Fashion has led me to a sense of self-discovery, happiness and escapism in the trying moments life has thrown along the way, which has made me realize that, if it holds such importance to me or anyone else reading this, then it’s worth preserving. Seeing style return to the streets as more people reconnect with themselves through fashion has been a positive development. It’s also reminded me not to neglect my own self so deeply as we rediscover a life that we’ve all been so desperately deprived of this past year.

There was a time, not long ago, when streaming didn’t exist. You couldn’t log onto your computer and binge-watch your favorite shows for hours and hours from the comfort of your bed or couch. Television was something you saw when it aired, and if you happened to not be home at the time, you could only hope that someone—some benevolent and tender soul—would recount the details to you with vivid enthusiasm the next day at school. We had movie theaters back then, too. Enormous ones. Multiplexes. A charcuterie of options at every theater. But without access to a motor vehicle, license or disposable income, the local mall’s multiplex distance was simply prohibitive to a teenager like me. If you wanted access to movies and weren’t of age to drive, you had to go somewhere else. Somewhere local.You went to the video store.

Honestly, it was heaven.

All My Senses Came Alive Inside the Video Store

My neighborhood rental spot was Broadway Video. Broadway was three blocks from my suburban home, so it was walkable, accessible. It sat in a nondescript square building off of the intersection (my town had a single intersection, so it really was the intersection), designed by an architect whose aesthetic could neatly be described as “brutalist prison.” The interior was illuminated by dingy fluorescent panels, the carpet had numerous mystery stains and the faint perfume of burnt grocery store popcorn greeted you as you walked in the door. Honestly, it was heaven.And lord, the selection. My mouth still salivates recalling the view of wall-to-wall VHS tapes beckoning me, like sirens yearning for the attention of Odysseus. One could easily be overwhelmed by the variety: new releases, action, horror, cult, Western, romance, children, classic, and—my personal favorite—employee picks.I relished the choices, the sheer grandeur of variety. Every movie was there for you to touch, see and feel. Surveying them was a tactile experience—holding the cases and sliding your fingers across the laminated covers to read the descriptions on the back. How did this copy of John Waters’s Cry-Baby feel in my hands when held next to Dazed and Confused (a movie I’d seen at least 20 times)? The combinations were imperative, like pairing the right wine with your meal.

The Employees Had Encyclopedic Cinematic Knowledge

These questions were never a source of anxiety. The hunt was a joy, a delight, really. You had to trust your gut or the recommendation of one of the many wunderkind employees who possessed near-encyclopedic knowledge of cinematic history. These were the outcasts of the high school scene. The quiet ones. The lanky and pale, the unshaved savants. They wore Marilyn Manson T-shirts, had elaborate piercings, spoke in puns and expressed enthusiasm in a kind of Klingon-like monotone. Before computerized algorithms defined our interests and tastes, reducing them to predictable spheres of decision-making, these young kids were the gatekeepers to our stories. Their pay was minimum wage, but their knowledge was infinite. They were the power source of the store. I often walked to Broadway alone, but I never felt alone once I passed through their doors. I didn’t need to speak to anyone in there to feel connected. All of us browsing knew that we shared a collective purpose: to be enchanted, entertained, transported, challenged and inspired by the stories of our fellow humans. We didn’t need to speak it. It was in the air. This was the place where I was free of derision for wanting to watch French New Wave or The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. This was where I was encouraged to discover new realms, not put down for my differences (a common affliction of teenagers in any era). This was a sanctuary, protected by an unseen energy, cradling us all, reminding us that we were welcome, no matter what we were seeking.

Creativity isn’t meant to be rushed. It has to form at its own speed.

The Video Store Taught Me to Observe the World Around Me

As I grapple with the ever-present anxiety that is this current digital age, where so much of our daily lives are defined by immediacy, I sometimes travel back to rainy evenings at Broadway, when the staff would—without fail—play Christian Slater’s Hard Rain on loop. It delighted them to no end seeing if any shoppers would notice the recurring motif (to my knowledge, no one ever did except me, and this delighted them even more). The employees loved being able to take control of the store, dictating the mood of this fluorescent refuge. I never knew any of them personally. Outside, in town, at school, at home, who knows if they had the power to be alchemists of cinema, of personal taste in the same way. I never questioned it, nor did I really need to know. I relished watching them banter as I pretended to browse, hoping I could overhear just a dusting of their knowledge about Kurosawa, Truffaut and Herzog. Names that, at the time, were complete unknowns to me. Broadway is the reason I went to study cinema. Broadway is the reason I felt bold enough to be a storyteller. Broadway is where I found the courage to reflect my inner yearnings out into the public. Creativity isn’t meant to be rushed. It has to form at its own speed. I didn’t know it at the time, but these evenings spent browsing, awestruck by the limitless catalog of expression across these paint-chipped walls, were like beacons into my future. They were teaching me to take my time, to stop and look around at my world.“You’re safe here,” they still tell me, over and over. “And you belong.”

The clear, sunny sky and unforgettable sounds of the waves crashing into the shore always had a way of humbling my existence. The city by the sea felt so peaceful as kids ran through the salty breeze and into the cool green water while innocently squirting each other with neon-colored water guns. Long Beach was never known for having the cleanest beaches, but that still didn't stop this from being home. Everything has ups and downs, and Long Beach was no exception. The city is known for being diverse and embracing other cultures—which politicians would proudly highlight—but this wasn’t the truth in the ’80s and ’90s. The murder rate was high, crime even higher, and the idea of unity between the Black and brown community was a far-fetched fantasy. Violence, rage and hate fogged up the city with the perspective of “that’s just how it is.” Kids roamed the streets as parents battled through their own struggles of making ends meet by working multiple jobs or fighting their addictions that the prettier side of the city just didn’t understand or simply didn’t seem to care to understand.Eventually, I traded my hopes and dreams for the belief that life was just unfair and was constantly trying to murder me. I normalized the severity of my environment by telling myself, “That’s just the way it is.” With that belief came my strong need to survive and do anything necessary to achieve it. Instead of questioning or entertaining other options, I went on to what I knew. I joined a gang at the age of 13. Not because I wanted to be labeled a member of a disruptive group but because I wanted to feel fully appreciated, acknowledged and supported. No matter how violent the act, I was willing to do it for approval.

No matter how violent the act, I was willing to do it for approval.

I Thought My City Was Responsible for My Life Sentences

I was a teen when I was arrested for three counts of attempted murder. A law was passed that allowed the Long Beach court to charge a teen from the ages of 14 to 17 as an adult. That’s exactly what happened. I was sentenced to multiple life sentences and sent to some of the most violent adult prisons in California to serve my time.I spent my first decade in prison blaming anyone and everyone but myself for what felt like the result of my life. The gorgeous city of Long Beach was at the top of my list of what I considered the reason for choosing to harm and traumatize human life. I couldn’t explain my “why” and I was lost in not being emotionally intelligent enough to put into words the emotions that I was taught to bury deep within myself.Then, the Success Stories Program came into my life. It gave me the space to speak about what’s most important to me and taught me that vulnerability is not a weakness but a strength. Most importantly, I was finally empowered by being able to address my “why,” and the transformation began. I learned that my distorted definition of what a man was stopped me from me being my truest self. It’s this important knowledge that led me into a life of building a better community from within prison walls.

My Brother Convinced Me to Return to Long Beach

I served 18 and a half years in prison before Governor Jerry Brown commuted my life sentences. The first thing my fellow inmates asked me after receiving the call from the governor was, “Are you going back to Long Beach?” I responded, “No,” with firm confidence. At that point, I realized that I hadn't dealt with the resentment that Long Beach brought up for me. I felt that the city I grew up in had turned its back on me and threw me in a box to be forgotten. I’ll never forget the day my brother picked me up from the prison entrance that I never thought I would exit. It felt so unreal. Driving down Route 101 with no cuffs or shackles overwhelmed me with emotions. I traveled California throughout the majority of my life being escorted by prison guards and for the first time in a long time I was free. The highway seemed so familiar. No matter how far I was from home, it always felt close. The night was coming and my brother had set up a motel room. He asked if I would like to go to Long Beach. I declined. But he insisted, pointing out that times had changed. I didn’t have it in me to say no. The day felt dreamlike. Why wake up? I stood in front of the ocean that forever humbled me and tears ran down my face as I stared in awe at the Queen Mary ship. I made it back and couldn’t help but feel at home.

I made it back and couldn’t help but feel at home.

I Learned to Fall Back in Love With My City

For so long I was blaming the city, along with the people in it, for the many choices that I decided to make. The truth is, there is goodness in this city that is bettering itself through the people that live in it. There was a point in time that I never wanted to see this Long Beach again because I was ashamed to face the communities that I once destroyed. But I’ve fallen in love in so many different ways with this city, and that has led me into dedicating my life to being a part of the solution, especially when others may be quick to label people “the problem.”I once thought that life was about being a man, but thanks to the many lessons that I've learned in prison, I now know that life has nothing to do with being a man. It has everything to do with being a human and valuing others as such.

I can’t forget it. I can’t get away from it. To this day, I look at my hands sometimes and see blood, even though it’s not there. I hear the cries of tortured farmed animals ringing in my ears. I’ve done four undercover investigations at factory farms—two at dairy facilities, one at a chicken facility and one at a fish facility. As an animal lover, I wanted to be a hero for farmed animals and expose the abuse and exploitation they endure daily. Little did I know, my brief time in the industrial animal agriculture sector would cause lasting damage to my mental health. When I have flashbacks now, I try to breathe and hang on to reality, but sometimes it’s all I can do to keep myself from falling apart. As undercover investigators, we put ourselves on the front lines of the animal advocacy movement, but there is a hidden price we pay in the pursuit of truth and justice for animals everywhere.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw as an investigator.

Chicken Factories Show the Unforgiving Nature of the Agriculture System

To prepare for my journey as an investigator, I watched hours and hours of undercover footage of animals being brutally abused at factory farms, knowing I was going to capture additional footage to help expose to the world where meat, dairy and eggs really come from. I was also going to help people realize that there are healthier and compassionate alternatives to eating animals and animal products.My harsh, difficult upbringing led me to believe I was hardened enough to be able to do this harsh, difficult job. I was fully prepared to leave family, friends and the only life I had ever known. At the time, nothing else mattered. As someone who grew up suffering, I wanted to help the animals needlessly suffering inside factory farms. Whatever needed to be done, I would do it without worrying about my own mental and physical health. But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw as an investigator.I had no idea how unforgiving the industrial animal agriculture system could be until my first investigation at a “broiler” chicken factory farm. There, I witnessed how twisted animal farming really is. These chickens only live for roughly 47 days until they’re slaughtered for their meat. During every single one of those days, they live crammed into dark, windowless sheds by the thousands, with nothing in those sheds except food, water and corpses of other birds littered throughout the building. I picked up the dead bodies of chickens who had been left in the sheds for days until they turned into a purplish sludge that melted right through my fingers. I watched workers pull the heads off of chicks who were too small or sick and impale them on metal nails driven through the ends of plastic pipes.

The Dairy Industry Was Even Worse

On the last day of that investigation, I sobbed in my car as I left the site one last time, knowing that I was leaving behind so many chickens in such torturous conditions. My next investigations into the dairy industry were even worse. I witnessed affectionate, intelligent cows being beaten with wooden canes and metal pipes and dragged with chains by tractors. I watched workers mutilate young calves as they pressed hot iron tools into their skulls to burn away their skull tissue, part of the standard practice of disbudding. On one particular day, I saw a manager standing in front of an injured cow who was laid out on the ground behind a barn in the pouring rain. He had a rifle in his hand and held the barrel end of it to her forehead. If I close my eyes, I can still see how frail and frightened she looked. When the manager pulled the trigger, her head fell to the ground. But then I was shocked into silence as she struggled to get back up again. The manager brushed it off with a casual comment and I continued to watch her pitifully crawling until another shot finally put her out of her misery. I’ll never forget the sound of the calves grinding their teeth to brace themselves against the pain of the disbudding process, or the cries of the cows vocalizing in pain as their tails were twisted and their bodies beaten by workers forcing them into the milking areas. With each investigation, I ignored the brutal imagery and the noise in my mind. I shoved my emotions down and continued to do the work. It wasn’t until I conducted an investigation into the fish-farming industry that I realized that all the workers I encountered who committed all these shocking acts of cruelty might have been doing the same.

He had a rifle in his hand and held the barrel end of it to her forehead.

Factory Farming Is Designed to Make Workers Numb to Animal Abuse

Since fish are unable to vocalize their discomfort the way land animals do, I thought I would encounter workers who were indifferent to their suffering and not bothered at all by their pain, even more so than any of the other workers I encountered at the other facilities I investigated. But at a salmon hatchery, I was surprised by how often the workers expressed remorse over how the fish there were treated. And yet, their actions were contradictory to their words. I documented workers stomping on fish, slamming them against walls and tossing them over their shoulders to perform “trick shots.” One day as I watched a barrel full of live fish slowly suffocate to death, a supervisor approached me and told me how much it used to bother him, how the standard practice there was to let the fish suffocate and die. He then finished his statement by shrugging and saying that he got desensitized to it all. And that’s when it all clicked into place.The factory farming industry is inherently designed to influence employees to abandon all the best, compassionate parts of themselves in order to accomplish the tasks at hand. Low-level farmworkers are compelled to stifle their humanity in order to accept that they cause pain to animals during standard practice procedures, even when they hear their screams on a daily basis, enabling them to escalate their aggression into abuse. I experienced only a short amount of time in the industry and could already feel how the environment was designed to chip away at my spirit and leave me numb.I escaped the grip of factory farming and I still came away from it with lasting damage to my mental health. I feel like a fractured version of myself, still working to put the pieces back together. Part of my path to healing involves continuing my animal advocacy work even after retiring from undercover investigations. In my current position, I work to spread awareness about the cruelty of industrial animal agriculture and the exploitation that extends to animals and workers in the system. Going undercover allowed me to truly understand how detached workers often become from their own moral compass in order to fuel the profits of a devastating industry that cultivates pain, fear and death. Everyone—humans and animals alike—are caught in the crossfire.

I once had a therapist tell me that sex is a point of contention in a lot of relationships. One person wants more sex, one person wants less. It causes friction. I came out as asexual when I was 22 years old. I was married at the time, and while it wasn’t the only reason we split up, it was a major contributing factor. After I came out, my spouse told me that they weren’t sure if they could be in love with me if we weren’t having sex. “This isn’t what I signed up for when we got married,” they told me. I tried really hard to be accommodating of their needs and, desperate to keep our relationship going, I would sleep with them even though I didn’t want to. This was traumatic for me.

After I came out, my spouse told me that they weren’t sure if they could be in love with me if we weren’t having sex.

Three Things to Know About Asexuality

It’s really important to make three things clear. The first is that asexuality is a legitimate thing, just like any other sexual orientation. There just isn’t as much attention given to it, and it’s my firm belief that there are a lot more of us out there than many think. Because people are somewhat inherently self-focused, it’s difficult for a sexual person to understand the concept of someone not wanting to have sex. We also live in a hyper-sexualized society; this isn’t new information, and I don’t think I really need to spend an exorbitant amount of time explaining what I mean. But popular media portrays the lack of interest in sex as childish and temporary. The second is that asexuality is a spectrum. There are some asexual people who simply experience sexual attraction rarely. There are some who can only experience sexual attraction if they have a deep emotional connection with the other person. Your place on the spectrum does not invalidate your asexuality. The third is that no matter what your sexual orientation is, expecting anyone to have sex when they don’t want to is messed up. Period.

I Still Want to Have Romantic Relationships

People tend to equate being asexual to having zero interest in romantic relationships. And while there are some strictly platonic beings, a lot of asexual people still want to be in romantic relationships like anyone else. For sexual people, sex is generally an intense source of intimacy. So much so that other sources don’t appear as significant in comparison. But those other sources of intimacy are what I live for. Making dinner together, taking walks, holding hands, kissing—these are the things that make me feel romantically connected with someone. This isn’t to say that sexual people don’t experience intimacy from these things. It’s just that asexual people only have these forms of expression. When my ex-partner told me they didn’t know if they could be in love with me if we weren’t having sex, it cut deep. It felt like all of those little things that made me feel close to them meant nothing. And while that’s probably somewhat of an embellishment created by hurt feelings, one thing was clear: Sex mattered a lot more.After my marriage ended, I started seeing a girl with whom I’d attended high school. I had made a post on Instagram when I came out and, one day, when we were hanging out at a bar, she wanted to be sure. “Are you really?” she asked, with an overly concerned look on her face, waiting for me to answer. I explained what my asexuality looked like, and though I could tell that she didn’t totally get it, she told me it didn’t bother her. I truly believed that but we ran into a lot of the same issues that I did when I was married. When I said no, her disappointment was palpable. When I said no, she would try to change my mind. Part of the issue was that I was still timid about my own sexuality. I operated as if I wasn’t asexual most of the time, and I was faced with the expectations that are put on a sexual person. I don’t think she could completely wrap her head around the idea that I hated sex, though she said she was OK with it.

I’ve always known that something about me was a little different.

There Is a Fundamental Difference Between Asexuality and Other Sexual Orientations

I think that this cognitive dissonance is a big part of why it’s so hard to date sexual people as a non-sexual person. It’s 2021, and a majority of people acknowledge and respect different sexualities. But since there’s such a fundamental difference between asexuality and other sexual orientations, it tends to be acknowledged consciously but invalidated on a subconscious level. I’ve only been out for a few years, but I’ve always known that something about me was a little different. And ever since sex was on the table as a possibility—out or not—I’ve been expected to have sex when I don’t want to time and time again. As I navigate the dating world, I realize more and more that I have to be more willing to advocate for myself in those situations. But I think that if other people tried to understand asexuality better, it would be a little easier.

Going into seventh grade, I was really excited that I might be popular. I knew a bunch of other kids from the other feeder elementary schools and, after puberty hit me hard in fourth grade (with all the coincidental Catholic shame about my desires and the explicit nature of my fantasies), I felt awkward but super into girls—crazily into girls, insanely into girls. I hoped I would have girlfriends and friends, and feel more comfortable in my own skin. That hope lasted until the end of the first day of seventh grade.I was going to play sports, because playing sports was one way to be “cool,” especially after three years of taking jazz and tap dancing classes—usually being the only boy in a class of girls in leotards. It was something that added to my girl craziness, even as friends questioned, gently, whether I was gay or not for taking dance classes. So, I felt a need to do something “manly,” even though I had been part of the suburbs’ great pastime—soccer—in the local Catholic church league. Of course, we needed to take physicals first to make sure we were healthy.While waiting for one, it all went wrong. I saw one of my friends from elementary school, Ali, so I sat down next to her. I thought she was cute, of course, and liked her; she had lived in my neighborhood, but she went out with my friend, Dave, and not me. That was OK though. As we sat talking, I did what awkward 12-year-old boys do to girls they like and teased her. It was not malicious because I had known her so long, but it apparently seemed malicious to some older boys I didn’t know. They rose to her defense and began teasing me.It was savage. I pulled back into a defensive physical pose, holding my right shoulder with my right hand, which looked funny. But I was scared and defensive. They began to tease me for that awkward pose and said I looked like a girl and that I was a “femme.” Like most childhood traumas, I don’t remember how long I sat there as three boys told me I looked like a girl and asked me if I was gay. By the time I got home, I was broken. What began that day was six years of bullying about my sexuality, lasting until I graduated high school.

It was savage.

What Is Was Like Being Bullied for Being Gay When I’m Straight

I am a straight, cis-gendered male, so the bullying was about who I wasn’t, not about who I was. However, it was relentless. Middle school, like it is for most people, was hell. I dreaded changing classes because if one of my tormentors saw me in the hallways he’d scream, “FEMME! THAT KID’S A FEMME.” Some of the popular kids, who had been my friends, would shy away from me in public spaces, lest my low status rub off on them. The dreams I had of having friends and being popular were dead. Because of middle school dynamics, my tormenters grew in numbers as they roped in their friends into their ravenous wolfpack of sexuality-based bullying. Several times a day, while changing classes, I endured screamed taunts and public humiliation. They didn’t have to touch me physically because they destroyed me emotionally. The sound of the bell ringing at the end of each class sent a shiver of terror down my spine because I didn’t know if I’d be seen and taunted. I learned to change routes and flee, to keep my head down and hide, hoping that I would be unseen as I moved about my day.Eighth grade brought a severe case of chickenpox because of course it did. It left me covered from head to toe in scabs and pox marks. I remember now, with shame, being mean to another kid in my class, who had bad acne, because I wanted the focus off my scabs, supposed “femininity” and homosexuality. The vicious dynamics of that age and my sense of hopelessness made me act cruelly sometimes, even though it never alleviated my torment. As with seventh grade, I dreaded the end of the class bell, the bus ride home, the random encounters at the mall. I did extracurricular activities every day, just so I could take the late bus home from school to avoid my bullies.

Once the Bullying Starts, It Doesn’t Stop

No matter what, one cannot flee forever. I always got caught. One event stands out. I had to take the regular bus home one time, schlepping my heavy tenor saxophone. I got stuck sitting near my tormentors because of course I did, with my big case in the aisle, my hand on the handle to keep it from sliding. After enduring what felt like an eternity of slurs and insults, we arrived at the stop where a couple of them were getting off. Each made sure to step on the hand clutching the handle to hurt me. I got home, went into my room and just cried. I was inclined to tear up when bullied, but this was one of those broken moments that etched itself into my consciousness forever. The mix of fear, rage at my powerlessness and sadness at my ongoing humiliation didn’t often break me down, but, when it did, I broke down hard.I endured middle school, earned high grades, was a good athlete and even had a girlfriend or two, though never for more than a few days—I always tried to hide her from the public lest my low status ruin her reputation. I lived on high alert from my tormentors, afraid to date girls, though desperately wanting to do so because of my raging hormones. Still, I was ashamed of the ideas those hormones engendered. It was a toxic stew and it would not abate in high school.

The Bullying Even Had My Parents Thinking I Was Gay

In my first year in high school, I had a specified lunch period, as one does. Lunch had always been a scary time for me in middle school, but I had luckily managed to avoid most of my tormentors. My luck would not hold. I was able to shelter among my sister’s older friends through lunch, and tried to wear their skater identity as my own. I finally just abandoned lunch and scheduled classes in place of lunch for my remaining high school years—not the worst thing for an academic kid. It was around this time that my uncle died, and my parents somehow got wind of my torment. I’m not sure why it wasn’t until high school, but the conversation happened in the car on the way home. “But do you think it might be true? What did they say about you? Are you gay? Your uncle was gay,” my mom asked. “No, mom, It hurts so much because I am not gay, because it’s not who I am.” I don’t remember much more of the conversation, but it revealed something important about my recently deceased uncle. It was real, and it filled me with questions about his life and death.

No matter what, one cannot flee forever. I always got caught.

Getting Bullied at School Affects the Rest of Your Life

For three more years I endured abuse. I was usually hungry from skipping my lunch period and afraid to date girls, despite desperately wanting to; I worked as hard as I could to be a great athlete and prove my manliness. Some tormentors stopped. One even apologized because his girlfriend, a friend, asked him to. Many more joined the action.During the senior talent show, I was somehow asked to co-host, and I dreaded it. I’d spent years being humiliated in the hallways and around town. If anyone screamed anything, it would be in front of an audience. They did, and I persisted anyway while dead inside. The positive campaign “It Gets Better” for gay youth was true for me, too. When I graduated, it got better. However, I carry with me deep emotional wounds and a fragility that manifests at random. Disappointments crush my spirits. I am still trying to prove I am not gay, that I’m a straight, “appropriate” man. I cannot imagine what LGBTQ+ youth feel, but I know their pain is real.

All my life I have been expected and pushed to be gay—or confused enough to explore my own gender identification. As I am often reminded by my mother, I used to “look like a little porcelain doll.” My general feminine looks as a child created unconscious confusion in her mind, as she often referred to me as "mija," instead of "mijo.” My mother never dressed me up like a little girl, but she continues to address me as mija even today. I notice sometimes when she catches herself, especially when in the company of others, and does her best to make it go unnoticed. I have come to understand that what I experienced throughout my life was not the most normal, especially after I turned nine years old.

This secret got shoved to the far corners of my mind.

I Was Often Mugged by Older Boys for My Mannerisms

I always loved to be in the kitchen experimenting with new creations, like my green pancakes or everyone’s favorite strawberry banana puffs. Instead of being outside with the rest of the boys, I chose to remain with my mother to learn the secrets of the kitchen and often made fun costumes to play in. I also had a knack for all the chores normally given to my sisters. I was a little shy around strangers. In school, I had learned to be very aware of myself, as the boys always picked on me and called me names like “fag” and “sissy.” One time, a group of older boys waited for me on my path home and jumped me and held me down while one of them covered my face with tattoo stickers. Horrified, I scratched at my face in an attempt to remove them. My mom and sisters screamed when I arrived home and my face was covered in blood. We lived in a neighborhood that only had communal bathrooms and showers. One day, while I was showering, Pelon, my older brother’s good friend, took the showerhead next to me. Minutes later, he began asking me questions. “I hear you're a sissy, is that true?” he said. I felt choked by fear and couldn’t find the words to answer. He suddenly stopped the shower, took my hand and led me into a bathroom stall. “Are you a sissy?” he asked again. I stayed quiet, so he proceeded to take my hand and asked me to feel him. Then, after sitting on the toilet seat, he asked me to sit on his lap. After a few minutes, I felt a warm gush on my bottom and he quickly exited the stall. “I will beat you up if you tell anyone,” he said on his way out. He would continuously and randomly force me to secretly join him in random places indoors and out. His physical demands grew, however, and luckily enough, after a few months, we moved away. It all felt like a bad dream full of confusing feelings. This secret got shoved to the far corners of my mind.

I Eventually Became Obsessed With Sex

I learned at an early age to blend in, be normal and have thick skin. The insults now included other names—maricon, Mary, mariposa, nancy, fruitcake, joto, fairy, poofter, pansy—and other acts of hatred followed me. I learned to block it out. The abusiveness pushed me to become engrossed in my studies. My hard work later paid off, as I was awarded a scholarship to a prestigious boarding high school and then to Berkeley. As a result, I had managed to cut myself off from physical pleasure and deny myself the experience of a healthy relationship. For years, I remained in denial or perhaps reluctant to face the confusing question that Pelon had once asked me: “Are you a sissy?”I couldn’t answer that question until my sophomore year at Berkeley. I was living in the dorms and became a study buddy with my roommate’s friend from across the hall. Jeff was a cool med student with a motorcycle and a girlfriend who visited him during holiday breaks. One time, while we were studying in his room, he laid in his bed and I sat on the sofa. Eventually, he got up and sat next to me, sliding his hand onto my thigh. I turned to look at him and he moved forward to kiss me. I jumped up, took my stuff and raced out of the room. I was unable to sleep that evening—my mind was flooded with the memories and confusing feeling of my experiences with Pelon. I was unable to shut off the endless voices in my mind shouting out “sissy,” “fruitcake,” “pansy.” I popped out of bed and decided to walk over to campus to my favorite secluded garden. As I turned the corner to enter the square, I made eye contact with a student and he followed me there. In a matter of moments, he came right up to me and began to swallow my tongue and forcefully grope me. I was on fire, something inside me cracked open. The pent-up lust that had been squelched by fear oozed out. He released, quickly buckled his pants and poof, he vanished. I felt dirty and confused but it all left me with an unquenchable thirst for more. I became obsessed with the need for sex however it came. I was acting like a dog in heat. A single desire drove my senses: sex, sex and more sex. I found myself in the most unexpected places ready to partake in anonymous exchanges. Nothing else mattered. I felt like an addict who was in constant need of a fix. Although I had been called “sissy” all my life, I was mostly clueless about what it really meant. I just saw it as an insult. But here I was, playing out the role of a total cocksucker. The funny thing is, I entered the gay world to fulfill the role but discovered, gays were also unwilling to accept me. Although they had no problem engaging in meaningless sex with me, most of them labeled me as too girly or feminine to develop anything more. My own friends would constantly tell me, “You are a natural drag queen!” I was horrified by the idea and it filled me with shame. “Where do I belong?” I often asked myself.

I became obsessed with the need for sex however it came.

I Struggled to Adapt to My Gay Label

Funnily enough, a few months later, while exploring the Stud—a bar Berkeley students frequented in San Francisco—I noticed this guy on the opposite side of the room turning my way. This went on for ten minutes before he began to walk in my direction. As he got closer, I realized it was Jeff, my study buddy from across the hall. I felt embarrassed that I had avoided him since our incident. He was very friendly and apologetic for what happened. We soon became close, and I learned that he and his girlfriend had an agreement that permitted him to explore his bisexual side. Since she was mostly away, he told me he would like to explore intimacy with me. He was new to the bisexuality thing and felt I was just girly enough to make him feel at ease. Months later, he ended his relationship with his girlfriend. For the first time, I felt loved and appreciated for just being me. He was my first real love. It ended after our graduation when he left for medical school and I went to New York.New York life was exciting but it was very challenging to find another real connection. After a few years of trying to fit into the gay label, I was physically and emotionally dissatisfied. I missed the comfort and natural connection I enjoyed with Jeff. He was the first person with whom sex didn’t feel dirty—it was intense but tender, and it felt safe. I realized that my connection with Jeff was in part driven by his acceptance and enjoyment of my feminine ways. My mother’s mistake of calling me mija during one of our phone calls moved me to experiment with a physical transformation, to live out what everyone had always recognized in me. “La chica.”

I Learned I Wasn’t Ready to Fulfill the Expectations of Being Trans

I began to investigate the trans world. I took on Magie as my incognito persona. I began chats on straight and bisexual networks for men to test if my voice was credible enough. I wanted to see if everyone was right about me being a girl. I even began to attend trans bars but felt very out of place. It seemed that most of the girls in these places were pros working the venues. Although I did receive a good amount of attention and was referred to as “classy girl,” these places didn’t fit me. I chose to hold on to my self-respect, refusing to play the role of one more trans prostitute doing anything for roses. I took on Magie fully, at least behind closed doors, and began to frequent chats and sites where I freely expressed my feminine gifts. It would begin with amazing conversations with mostly “straight” men who would open up and disclose their deepest fears and desires. As I developed a certain intimacy and trust, I would disclose my secret. These men were so ready to exercise their fantasies that they chose to suspend reality and accept me as a girl. My sexual experiences with these new friends varied from sweet, passionate and tender to wild and, at times, scary. So much of the experience had to do with the amount of self-loathing and insecurities these men carried with them. I was able to relate. I had spent a good amount of my life loathing everything feminine about myself. My interactions with these adventurous souls were short-lived. Those who wanted more only wanted the pleasure of sexual encounters behind closed doors. The importance of self-acceptance became clear thanks to these interactions. Although I enjoyed these experiences, I was not ready to live hidden behind closed doors as Magie, or set her free to live in the open. I realized that being a girl takes a whole lot of work. Frankly, I became tired of trying to fulfill the high expectation of these men for the perfectly manicured woman. I was grateful for the wisdom Magie had imparted, but I realized living life as a girl was not really my thing.For the past ten years, I have been experiencing celibacy and, I have to say, it is very freeing. I often tell my gay nephew that, “I am a free human being who chooses to be a non-practicing gay man with a sleeping beauty called Magie always ready to play.” I have released my mother’s vision of me as mija and all the other external labels that have fueled insecurity, fear, lack of self-acceptance, self-loathing and confusion. It's up to me to choose who and what I am, and what I will become.

When I was about seven years old, I came home from school and my mother told me that we needed to go to a doctor for a routine “injection.” Little did my younger self know that the injection would scar me for life. I still remember the place where it happened, a small dingy doctor’s office in the old part of my city. The office had a small reception area and a door leading to another room where the doctor saw patients. The smell of disinfectant and alcohol rub was heavy in the air. When I entered the clinic with my mother, there was no one else there. Inside, the doctor closed the shutter of her clinic all the way down, which in retrospect is very odd, but obviously, my seven-year-old brain didn’t question it. After all, my mother was with me holding my hand, and I trusted her.The doctor took us straight inside the clinic and drew the curtains. She asked me to lie down on the bed and removed my underwear. I was definitely a little scared now, as most children would be of injections. However, I complied with whatever was asked like an obedient child. “It will be over soon.” She brought the needle out and gave me a shot (that was supposed to be the local anesthesia). It pricked and I squirmed a little. The worst is over, isn’t it? But it wasn’t. The doctor then brought out the blade, and in one swift motion, it was done, I was bleeding. I had been circumcised. This time I experienced a shooting pain (the anesthesia wasn’t 100 percent effective). I cried and howled, not even fully comprehending what had happened, but my body knew it was something terrible and grieved almost instantaneously. The doctor did the dressing and we left the clinic. I was in pain and it was so difficult for me to walk for a couple of days after the procedure. My mother brought me ice cream on the way back home because I was such a “good and strong girl.” It’s funny how my act of being “good and strong” at the doctor's clinic is the very thing that makes me feel angry, inferior, dissatisfied, insecure and guilty.

I cried and howled, not even fully comprehending what had happened.

Genital Mutilation Is Common for Girls in My Culture

Female genital mutilation (FGM), or as my culture calls it, “khatna,” is the practice of cutting a part of the clitoris (the hood and the tip of the glans), an extremely common when I was growing up. Why does my culture do it? Some people who defend the ritual say that the main reason for circumcision is hygiene, not only physical but spiritual. Some say it’s to enhance sexual satisfaction. None of these claims have been supported by research.The most popular claim is that it is done to control sexual desire in women. For women, sex is just a means to procreate, it is not for pleasure. It was a way to protect women from having premarital sex or avoid straying away from their existing marriages. And what other way to ensure that women are loyal, chaste and pure? Cut off the part of the body that gives them sexual pleasure. No sexual pleasure translates to loyalty and purity, eliminating the temptation to commit “dark, forbidden sins.” Forget about teaching young girls values and responsible decision-making. The logic of it all makes me cringe. (Ironically men in my culture are legally allowed to marry four women.)According to studies, 80 percent of seven-year-old girls in my culture have had their clitoris cut in some way. Most girls will forget about the incident in a few months after it happens or block it out of their conscious memories. I also did that. My young mind at the time was not able to consciously process, understand and make sense of the situation. However, my body still remembered it as a form of implicit (unconscious) memory—the feelings, the sensations, the discrimination and unfairness of it all.This was the beginning of the conditioning of the prejudiced belief that women are subordinate to men and that their needs (sexual or otherwise) are secondary. These implicit memories and messages indirectly had a bearing on my views about being a female and about sex while growing up even without me realizing it.Of course, I am not a child anymore. I have had many new experiences, and a lot has changed since then. Including my beliefs.

This Practice Is an Intergenerational Problem

My family is pretty modern, liberal and progressive. So, what made my mother give in to such a regressive practice? It’s a question I repeatedly grappled with when I was old enough to understand it. I remember the day I asked her if I had undergone the knife and had my clitoris removed. I was about 22 years old then. She affirmed it. It all suddenly came back to me—the visuals, the smell, the sequence of events and the painful sensations (physical and emotional). I blamed my mother for putting me through this barbaric custom for the longest time. She defended herself by saying she was advised and pressured by her mother to do this. She had undergone it, too, when she was little. It was the norm for young girls to get rid of “the excess flesh that was the root of all evil things.” That’s when I realized that my mother herself was a victim of this unjust and mindless ritual, too. She was just following a religious obligation that has existed in my culture for decades, no questions asked. The sad reality is that women do this to other women and the problem permeates through generations. That’s when I started being mad at the entire system. The problem was not my mother, it was the people that preached the importance of this practice as some sort of spiritual hygiene.

The sad reality is that women do this to other women and the problem permeates through generations.

I Didn’t Experience Pleasure During Sex

The subtle messages of gender inequality, and the archaic practice that I experienced as a child, acted as invisible forces that influenced my adult life.I remember the first time I had sex with my partner. I was in my mid-20s. I began crying in between because it almost felt like I was committing a sin. I felt embarrassed of myself and my body. Even though I was not wearing any clothes, I felt covered in so many layers of moral judgment and guilt. I brushed it off, believing that my first time had encouraged these feelings. However, even later when we tried, most of the time I just laid there, staring at the ceiling and feeling nothing other than a tremendous amount of anxiety for my “delinquent behavior.” I was shy, awkward and uncomfortable, and those feelings didn’t go away for a long time. I never really achieved an orgasm and kept wondering what the big deal about sex was. It was nothing like how my friends described it: “It’s like a release of pent-up energy” or “the most blissful, euphoric ‘aah’ moment.” What’s worse is that I couldn’t ever ask my partner to stop even when I didn’t feel like it. After all, it’s about his needs, right? Or so I was conditioned to believe. I had acquired this sense of learned helplessness. I thought of myself to be secular, liberal and a feminist, someone who believed in equality and individual freedom, who looked beyond gender and sex stereotypes. And yet, here I was, unconsciously feeding into the same biases that I verbally disapproved of. I felt like an imposter while talking to my friends on issues of empowering women and female sexuality. I also thought that there was something inherently wrong with me, that maybe I was just asexual. Then I connected the dots and read articles on the clitoris and its role in pleasure. There were definitely physical changes made to my body, which made achieving an orgasm difficult, but the problem was more deeply rooted. There were also strong psychological defenses and years of patriarchal conditioning that were at play, which made me so guarded that I was never fully able to explore, experiment and express my sexuality completely, despite the obvious missing part. This had repercussions on my relationship with my partner as well. I often wondered what it would feel like if I had not been cut. The sad part is I will never know.

My Voice Will Not Be Silenced

I still don’t feel much, but I am slowly learning to lower my psychological guard, be more open and embrace my body and sexuality. These are things that I have control over. This has definitely helped me to ease up and enjoy whatever I still have and make the most out of my situation.Why does my culture feel the need to control female sexuality? Why can’t they leave female genitalia alone? Why is it done to an innocent, oblivious seven-year-old, yet to develop her faculties of thinking, questioning and decision-making? Maybe because it is easier to silence the cries of young, trusting children than to silence grown adult women with sound reasoning abilities.The secrecy and deception of it all coupled with the permanent changes made to my body—not to forget the pain and injustice that was etched in my memory—has undoubtedly left its scars. But it has also given rise to a voice unafraid to ask questions and take a stand anymore. To share the story. To condemn the practice. To save other young girls. To ensure that this doesn’t happen to my loved ones in the future.

I never knew what being bipolar meant. I always associated it with my dad yelling at my mom whenever she was in a bad mood. “Your mom’s bipolar, I swear to God,” he would tell me. I have this memory of him telling my mom to “take her happy pills.” As a 12-year-old, I had no idea she was depressed; I assumed the medicine was something to make her laugh when she was having a bad day. OK, so bipolar is when you’re happy one minute and mean the next, got it. Mental health was never talked about in our household. It was swept under the rug, never acknowledged. Even after I was diagnosed with an eating disorder at 18, my parents refused to recognize there was something wrong in my brain. Until I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder this past summer.

Promiscuity as a Form of Self-Medicating

Bipolar disorder is defined as “a disorder associated with episodes of mood swings ranging from depressive lows to manic highs.” I found myself exhibiting the behavioral symptoms, which include risk-taking behaviors, excess desire for sex, hyperactivity and impulsivity. I’d have racing thoughts and stumble through sentences. I started “sugaring” when I was 22. I heard it was easy money: Go out with an older man for dinner in exchange for a luxurious lifestyle. My experience was a bit different. The first “daddy” I had made sex a large part of our arrangement. He was only five years older, so it felt like having a boyfriend who didn’t care about my day and gave me $400 for taking his cock. I dissociated the first time I slept with him, and I would with every man I met. After a while, my job wasn’t “having a sugar daddy” anymore; it was prostitution. I was selling my body for money and disguising it with something people wanted to try. I’d disappear for hours, sometimes days. I let myself get into Ubers with men I didn’t know and go to places I didn’t know. I met strangers in hotel rooms. I acted out rape fantasies. I always said yes until I finally learned to say no. I stepped away from that life, but I didn’t know the worst was yet to come.

It’s no secret that American healthcare sucks.

Living With Bipolar Disorder During the Pandemic

The pandemic took a major toll on my mental health, but I kept the storm inside me to myself. I felt selfish complaining when the rest of the world was in the same boat. I refused to go to therapy. In my opinion, it's not my place to whine when millions have it much worse. So I self-medicated with drugs, booze, even sex. My best friend urged me to go to the ER after a breakdown last August. I kicked and screamed that I was fine, that I didn’t need any help. I finally caved on one condition: I could bring my stuffed giraffe. I’d never been to an emergency room before. I was by myself, lost, looking for someone who could help. I made my way to the nurses’ station, where a nice man asked why I was there. “I’m pretty sure I’m bipolar,” I said with tears running down my face.“We’re gonna get you some help, OK?” he said.Eventually, I was called back to the “we need to make sure you won’t kill yourself” ward. Every 20 minutes, a new doctor came to my room, and every 20 minutes, I told my story while they took notes with the same stone-cold expression.

Self-Medicating Is Easier—and Cheaper—Than Getting Professional Help for Bipolar Disorder

It’s no secret that American healthcare sucks. I couldn’t get in with a psychiatrist without a recommendation from a general practitioner, and they couldn’t recommend one until I saw a therapist, no matter how much I cried on the phone, begging someone to help. I had to spend nearly $1,000 (with insurance) to talk to someone. I was sick, and no one would help me. I didn’t have a broken arm or terminal illness, so I was shoved to the back of the line. After I finally spoke with a doctor, he recommended switching the medications that my general practitioner—who had little to no psychiatric experience—had prescribed. I stopped those cold turkey, and for five days straight, I threw up and lost control of my thoughts. I wanted to kill someone. If I could have gotten away with it, I would’ve stabbed someone on the street. Once the storm settled, I felt myself again, but I knew it was temporary.

I’m high on my way to my parents’ house for Easter.

Whether You Take Medication or Self-Medicate for Bipolar Disorder Doesn’t Matter

Medication hides mental illness; it doesn’t cure it. It can’t take your demons away. It hides them in a closet, where they wait to take you away. I even tried crack. I didn’t even think about it; I just did it. My boyfriend worries I’ll disappear. I honestly don’t even know if I’m gonna be able to finish this piece. So far, I’ve bought a desk, lamp, new table, diet cat food, shampoo and a couch. I’ve cleaned the house twice and snuck the rest of my coke at 9 a.m. And, as of ten minutes ago, I got drunk while dog sitting. Mania doesn’t give a warning when it’s coming or tell you how long it’s going to stay. I’m spending insane amounts of money on cocaine. It’s an expensive habit, but I crave it every day, and it takes me 30 seconds to get it. I can’t sit still, and I’m five minutes away from texting my dealer because I need to get high. In fact, I’m high on my way to my parents’ house for Easter. I want to believe I’ll get better, but optimism only lasts so long. You can have a strong support system, but it can’t fix you. You can have a prescription, but it can’t stop your dark thoughts. You can have vices, but they won’t cure the sadness in your heart. It’s on you to try, even when you’ve given up; but then again, when have I ever taken my own advice?

Of all the horrors going through my mind during my brief imprisonment at a “behavioral health facility,” perhaps the most terrifying was the thought that I might end up swallowed by the “mental health” system forever. No job. No family. No kids or grandkids. No purpose. Nothing to look forward to except endless drugs and sedation. No growing old or retiring in the countryside. Just a zombie-like existence locked up and medicated in a nuthouse. Forever. Those three days of torture, euphemistically described as an “involuntary examination” in an insane asylum, were without question the most horrific of my entire life. Nothing has ever terrified me in that way, before or since. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything that even comes remotely close. It was three days of hell, and even that doesn’t do it justice. Pray that you never end up in one of those ghastly places. Before I tell you the details of what it was like inside, some background on how I ended up trapped there is in order. The story is as nutty as anything you’ve ever heard. And without getting into all the details, I’ll tell you that even I don’t fully understand what happened, or why. It was surreal, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

This was all absolutely terrifying.

I Messed With the Wrong People, and There Were Consequences

It all began toward the end of my time in college. Some friends and I—at least I thought they were my friends—started a relatively successful and influential college newspaper. As we grew, and started looking under more rocks, we stumbled on some extremely serious crimes being perpetrated by powerful people in local government: Crimes that people would kill to conceal. One day, I received a strange phone call from a man claiming to be a local Freemason. I had never heard from him before, and I never heard from him again. But he said he was my “friend” and was just calling to warn me that I was in danger due to what we were working on at the newspaper. Basically, he said that if I didn’t stop, unnamed people would either kill me, get me locked up in jail, or have me thrown into a mental institution. He said not to bother calling the cops. They were in on it, too. As a 20-year-old college student and a baby Christian, this was all absolutely terrifying. I called my dad. He recommended calling the cops, but I never did—they were supposedly in on it, what the heck good would that do? Eventually, I started getting extremely concerned, perhaps even paranoid. The lack of sleep, from a combination of too much Adderall and too much work, didn’t help matters. And even though there is some mental haze surrounding it, to this day, I’m absolutely convinced that these local criminals of the vilest sort were, at the very least, trying to intimidate me.

My Lies Caught Up With Me and Earned Me an Involuntary Commitment

At some point, after a trip to Europe during which I thought people were following me, it became difficult to know what was real and what was just a figment of my imagination. Upon my return, in a stupid effort to try to cover my ass from the people supposedly out to get me, I pretended like I was now working with various federal law-enforcement agencies and even Interpol. Returning to my college town following the whirlwind trip through multiple European countries—including a stop in Scandinavia to see my future wife, who thought I was losing my mind when I told her what was going on—I shared my troubling experiences with my partners at our college paper. I also shared my bullshit story about working with the feds and Interpol with them, and even told them that I would defend myself with force if somebody tried to take me down. (What a tough guy.) That was a huge mistake. Suddenly, a couple of sheriff’s deputies showed up at my friend’s apartment asking for me. Right away, I identified myself. And then, like an idiot, I shared my bullshit story with them, too. All I could think about was the phone call warning me about my fate if I did not back down, and so my assumption was that this was it, I was doomed. Desperately trying to bullshit the deputies, I told them that I was on a mission for unnamed federal and international agencies to root out a criminal conspiracy in the area, and that journalism was merely my cover story. They didn’t believe me. In fact, they thought I was nuts. And because I had guns in my truck, and refused to provide any evidence that I was actually working with any legitimate law-enforcement agency, they asked me if I would consent to a psychiatric exam. “No way,” I told them. “Let me talk to the sheriff so we can clear this all up.” Long story short: They put handcuffs on me and took me in under a state statute, allowing a person to be held for a few days for an involuntary mental health exam if it is believed the person may be a threat to themselves or others. The ride in the back of the patrol car felt like it took forever. I was sure I was being taken to the nuthouse, just like the creepy “friend” on the phone had promised would happen.

What Is It Like Being Admitted to a Psychiatric Hospital? Absolute Hell

The intake clerk demanded everything from me when I arrived—including my necklace and rings. At every step of the way, I demanded that I be allowed to speak with an attorney, frantically quoting federal statutes I had memorized about the deprivation of rights under color of law being a major federal crime. I think it scared them. They finally let me call a friend who was a legal expert, and I told him my bullshit story, too. He contacted my family and let them know, which may have been what saved me. Because I arrived late at night, the orderlies took me to my shared room without being seen by a shrink first. I would not get to see a psychiatrist until the next day. Trying to sleep in a situation like that is like trying to sleep on a nest of fire ants while covered in peanut butter—it’s absolutely, positively impossible. Another sleepless night, my mind racing, imagining every horrific scenario possible. The next day, I met with a psychiatrist. He read my intake report and asked me about it. Thinking he was in on the effort to get me, I had nothing to say other than I wanted to be let out, that there was nothing wrong with me, my rights must be respected, and I fully intended to pursue justice as soon as I got out of there. Soon after, he concluded I had bipolar disorder and prescribed Zyprexa for me, a powerful anti-psychotic. Thinking it would paralyze me and allow these creeps to do whatever they wanted, I refused to take anything. (To this day, I believe the disorders and diagnoses used by psychiatrists are even bigger bullshit than my story about working for the feds.)In fact, after learning years later how these alleged “disorders” were invented—psychiatrists literally get together and vote on this crap, and if there are enough votes, they add it to their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—I could not believe anybody could take this seriously. Scientology and I have virtually nothing in common, but its exposure of psychiatry’s lunacy is its broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day moment.

Psychiatric Hospitals Are All About Power and Control

The power dynamics in the nuthouse were unlike anything I ever experienced in my life. And I believe people need to learn more about this abusive system immediately. There was a very clear hierarchy. At the top were the psychiatrists, who held unlimited and total power over the lives and fates of those at the lower rungs. They could set you free. Or they could lock you up forever. I think the power gets to their heads, at least for a lot of them. Under them, the orderlies. A lot of them were drunk on power, too. If you resisted their commands, you could find yourself tackled, locked up and even pumped full of sedatives that were the equivalent of a mental straightjacket. There was a kind nurse that I still remember, but other than that, it was horrific. It made me think of the infamous Milgram experiment in which volunteers were willing to zap people. Prisons probably have similar dynamics, though I couldn’t tell you for sure. Similar hierarchies existed among those trapped inside. There was one evil, giant guy in there, who was very clearly friendly with the orderlies and seemed to have lots of special privileges. He really freaked me out. Other patients warned me about him. The word was that he was in there voluntarily because it gave him access to “fresh meat.” Apparently he could come and go as he pleased. Even though nobody told me explicitly, I assumed he had been abusing my roommate, who never said a single word the whole time I was in there. The entire ordeal was freaky beyond belief. And thanks to that phone call, and the attitude of the psychiatrist, I was concerned that I might end up trapped in a hellhole like that facility forever. Eventually, one of the other young guys trapped in there explained to me what the secret was to getting out: Just agree with the shrink on everything and throw yourself at his mercy. So I tried that the next day. It worked like a charm, and my discharge papers were prepared shortly after that. As part of that agreement, though, I finally took one of the pills the quack had prescribed for me to show my submission to his “authoritay,” in the immortal words of Eric Cartman. The only thing I can compare that pill to is a (temporary, thank God!) mental lobotomy. It left me completely incapacitated. It was like slowing your brain down to a snail’s pace.

The story has another twist.

Turns Out, the Conspirators Weren’t Responsible for My Involuntary Admission

Getting out was the greatest feeling in the world. It may have helped that my dad knew someone on the board of the company that ran the facility. But I still think the real trick to getting out was just agreeing with the chief quack. The story has another twist. It was not shadowy conspirators who called the cops and got me thrown into that hell, it was my supposed friends and colleagues. When I finally found out they’d called the cops, it was a devastating realization, and heartbreaking, too. To this day I suspect ulterior motives: They had already made clear that they wanted to seize control of the newspaper from me. There had been an increasing divergence in our views. My two top deputies were homosexual libertarians, and even though I was also a libertarian, I had become a Christian. They wanted to promote the LGBT agenda with the paper. I wanted to promote the Bible. After I got out, we found out that our ad sales director had been sabotaging our ad sales. Not long after that, he asked me if I wanted to join Freemasonry—a secret society that supposedly doesn’t even invite people to join. Obviously, I said no.

The Truth May Haunt Me Forever, But I’m Never Going Back There

Perhaps I’ll never know the full truth about everything that happened in that ordeal, or why. To this day, I still don’t pretend to fully comprehend it all. But God used it in remarkable ways. And it taught me some very valuable lessons. Starting with: Avoid the psychiatric industry and their Big Pharma co-conspirators at all costs. It has become fashionable to fret about how the homeless problem could supposedly be solved simply by building more mental hospitals and locking up more people in them. But after spending a few days in one, I can say ending up in a place like that is a fate I would not wish on my worst enemy. I still wonder how many people locked up in insane asylums are saner than most of us on the outside. Probably tons—maybe most of them. How many beautiful minds have been rotted out by poison masquerading as medication will never be known, but I bet it’s a whole lot. What I do know for sure now is that the mental health system is absolutely, positively, batshit crazy. I know some people claim to have benefited from the services of psychiatrists. But as far as I’m concerned, the whole field is a bunch of quackery, if not a giant criminal operation to peddle dangerous drugs and make big bucks. My advice: Avoid it at all costs. Open up a Bible instead.

It seemed like a seemingly ordinary day in Baguio, the Philippines’ City of Pines. After my classes at university, I decided to explore a street fair on Session Road with one of my good friends, Angelina. It was bright and sunny out, with a beautiful, cool breeze that erased any tiredness I felt from being cooped up in dingy classrooms all day listening to tedious lectures. As we walked through the crowded streets, we explored the various stalls made for this event, chit-chatting away, talking of nothing and everything at the same time. Our eyes explored the trinkets and merchandise that was for sale. I set my sights on two baby cacti, which I jokingly told my friend I would name Wanda and Pietro, because, why not?Eventually, I decided to go home—it was a long day after all. On the cab ride home, I saw a place that reminded me of Manila. It was a prominent Thai spa franchise that I usually went to for great massage and spa treatments at reasonable prices. I hastily told my driver to stop and I went in. Upon entry, a smiling receptionist greeted me and told me that their best spa treatment was an aromatherapy massage, which combined the use of hot stress balls and deep-tissue massage to rub the coldness and soreness out of my body. It sounded so beguiling, I said yes. Still, as smiley as ever, the receptionist told me, “Unfortunately, most of the female therapists are busy for the next few hours. But, if it’s okay, ma’am, we have a male therapist available.” Without a second thought, I said yes. Why wouldn’t I? It was a trusted establishment from home, and all of the employees seemed perfectly professional.

It Was a Normal Massage—Until It Wasn’t

My massage therapist’s name was Jim. In the beginning, it was standard procedure for a massage. I smiled at him, and he wordlessly led me to the massage area. After he left me alone, I took off my clothes and, wearing nothing but my underwear, laid down in a prone position. Nothing felt out of the ordinary—I was even texting one of my best friends while I waited. Jim then arrived with the necessary tools and politely asked if I was ready. Ecstatic, I said yes. At first, he did his job in a very professional manner. He applied pressure when I asked, and struck up a conversation. “Ma’am,” he said, “you have so many cold spots in your back.” I told him that my back was in constant pain. It was a very good and relaxing rubdown. I was comfortable to the point that I thought I might doze off when he started to massage my sternum, that part of the chest between a woman’s breasts. As his hands went lower, so did the towel over my body. Suddenly I felt him push down further and start tracing the lining between my breasts. Then the towel was off, and I couldn’t move. I began to fidget, letting him know that I was still conscious. But then he said, “Wait, ma’am.” Then he boldly caressed my bosom and felt my nipples. My damn body’s reaction gave that tingling sensation, those pinpricks of arousal, but I was stuck motionless. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even say anything; I just simply froze. I was confused by how my body felt, and silenced by what just happened. Usually, I’m the kind of gal who always had something to say, but now I couldn’t raise my voice. Then suddenly, Jim moved to my side and, as if he was my lover, his hands trailed down to my underwear. That’s when I found my voice. I croaked out, “What are you doing?” Then he laughed sheepishly, pulling his hand away, and said, “Sorry, ma’am.” Then he proceeded to end the highly recommended aromatherapy treatment.

I just simply froze.

I Fought for Justice, but Couldn't Find It

After that, I did what had to be done. I filed charges against him and hired the best female lawyer in the city that money could buy. I woke up early to attend an 8 a.m. trial and finally take the witness stand against him. In the Philippines, we don’t have juries, and private court trials only happen if the judge sees it as an absolute necessity. The judge refused my lawyer’s request for the trial to be private because he wanted to see if there was any truth in my story. Remembering this now fills me with rage. I was about to be put on trial by three men and the public that sat for their cases. There I was, thinking this was something to prepare for, like a debate or exam. My lawyer briefed me about what can happen in the courtroom. The schoolgirl in me thought I had this in the bag. But that rush of confidence faded as soon as I placed my hand on the book. My nerves of steel waned. As soon as they started asking me questions, I broke down. Tears streamed down my face uncontrollably. The bailiff had to get me a box of tissue as the questioning started. Jim had hired a shrewd defense lawyer, who also happened to be male. He blamed the fact that I had breasts, that I drove him to temptation, and honestly, his thought pattern is not anything new. Most of the men here think that way, and they say it’s a democracy. The judge was a 50-year-old man who was pretending to be neutral, but in this country, there is no such thing as unbiased. As I gave my statement, he looked at me as if it was my fault that he was in this mess. For the next eight months, the trial was a part of my daily routine, getting up early on court-appointed dates and hearing out the witnesses I had to help push my case forward. But in the end, it was all for naught. Jim never took the stand. His lawyer advised him not to speak because of the guilt. It was dead-on obvious. His beady eyes said it all. Guilt oozed from his pores. As the hammer went down, the judge ruled that this case was not one of sexual harassment but an unjust vexation. What is an unjust vexation? Apparently, in legal terms, here in the Philippines, it means an “arresto menor or a fine ranging from five to 200 pesos, or both.” In layman’s terms, a man touching my body without permission was merely a minor annoyance in the eyes of the court. It felt like the ruling was a way of shutting me up. Jim’s punishment led to a few weeks of jail, community service and a fine (paid to me) of 20,000 PHP ($416 USD) for the trouble.

Here, there is no such thing as unbiased.

When It Comes to Abuse and Misogyny, Some Things Never Change

This story isn’t new at all. It’s a tale as old as time. But who would have thought that this still occurs in a cultured modern society with all the innovations and progress we made through the years? Here in my country, a majority of women have grown accustomed to this kind of treatment. To be truthful, we are desensitized to it. We hear stories from our aunties, uncles and cousins, and read news reports of domestic abuse, rape and harassment that are constantly emblazoned in the local news or tabloids—always told sensationally, like they were a telenovela. But the reality is, abuse and misogyny are everywhere. They exist in the courtroom, in our circles of friends and even at the heart of things: our family. When the judge made his decision, I remember crying and questioning why. But instead of giving up hope, I chose a different route. I sought justice by taking back what is mine: my dignity.

At age 12, I was invited to join an elite training facility for figure skaters. Five years later, I left the sport injured, depressed and bearing invisible scars that I still battle with today. The elite facility had trained Olympians, World Medalists and Canadian Champions, but underneath the success stories existed a system that preyed on vulnerable, underage children and enabled abuse, all the while glorifying itself as producing “lean, mean skating machines.” I was consumed by a system that valued output over results. But that was 25 years ago. It was different then. This couldn't happen now, you say. Wrong. A quick Google search of coaching abuse in performance sports like figure skating and gymnastics shows that abusive coaches and toxic training facilities still exist. In so many other walks of life, abusers are outed and canceled. In the sports realm, especially where underage athletes are concerned, these coaches are lauded—many have cemented a place in the hall of fame of their respective sports. Sure, they are tyrants, leaving broken and battered students in their wake. But isn't it worth it, if they get results? Don't these coaches, despite their unsavory tactics, deserve our applause because they did what no one else did? They turned athletes into heroes.

Figure Skating and Abuse Go Way Back

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters was released in 1995 and the book detailed the injuries, eating disorders and abusive coaching practices that were systemic within gymnastics and figure skating. I was 15 at the time.The book detailed the awful cultures that underage athletes were subjected to. The head coach at my elite training facility publicly decried it as “complete garbage” and parents and skaters only spoke of the book in whispered side conversations. Parents continued to drop their kids off, drive away and leave them in the hands of the head coach, a known tyrant whose training center was an institution fueled by silence, secrecy and abuse.My mom assumed that “coach knows best” and my father asked nothing. I was grateful for their disinterest. Skaters whose parents spoke out were publicly mocked by coaches in front of the others. The message was clear: What happens here, stays here. Speak out and you’ll be punished. I held up my end of the bargain and said nothing.The training center was located two hours from my hometown. For years, my mom drove the four-hour round trip, five days a week from September to April. I did homework by flashlight in the back of the car and ate my dinners out of corrugated fast-food boxes. In the summers, I boarded during the week and came home on weekends. After five years, my parents were on the brink of divorce and were no longer able to afford the hefty skating bills. I was forced to quit before proving myself. I left, having experienced physical and emotional abuse at the hands of my coaches and sexual misconduct at the hands of another skater.

So what? Every teenager keeps secrets from their parents and I was no different.

I Have More Stories of Abusive Coaches Than I’d Care to Remember

We trained 20 hours a week during the school year and 40 hours a week during the summer. As the hours increased, it became easier to board with local families and attend school nearby. This began the handoff of control from parents to coaches. This is a fundamental step in sustaining a culture of abuse: Remove the children from the parents. As underage athletes, our first and final point of contact every day was our coaches. That included two hours of ice time before school, a few hours of class at the local high school and back to the arena for another three-to-four hours of on-ice and off-ice training.During the week I didn’t call my parents; they had no idea what was going on. So what? Every teenager keeps secrets from their parents and I was no different. I hid injuries and accidents. Coaches retaliated if parents complained or if an athlete complained about an injury. I trained through back pain that took my breath away—I found out later that it was stress fractures in my spine. I said nothing of the deep purple bruising on my knees, elbows and hips. I ignored the golf ball-sized lump of scar tissue on my hip, the result of falling repeatedly on a throw triple salchow. I certainly didn’t tell them about the awful lesson where my partner tried our first triple twist on ice. This move involved him throwing me in the air and catching me after I completed three rotations. We tried over and over, falling each time. “Again,” our couch yelled as soon as we fell. Over and over we picked ourselves up, skated around and attempted the failed maneuver. I was battered and bruised, but mostly I was scared. What we were doing wasn’t safe, but I couldn’t say that. Complaining would invite rage, and I was already on tenuous ground. My eyes filled with tears as the Zamboni circled us. Crying and weakness were unacceptable. His rage spiked when he saw my tears.“What are you crying about?!” he spat. I panicked. I had been here before. My go-to answer was “nothing” because saying “you’re yelling at me” had only incited more verbal abuse. Either way, I knew that crying was a punishable offense. I looked at my hands, as though they would have the answer. And fortunately, this time they did. Blood streaked down my arm and hand, a result of a toepick puncture in my wrist when my partner had tripped over my body during an earlier fall. “Thank god,” I thought with relief. I finally had a reason to cry. I held my wrist up, “This,” I said. He looked at me with disgust and frowned, “Get off the ice.” There was no sympathy, no respect for injuries. I put on a Band-Aid and was back on the ice.

There Are All Kinds of Physical Abuse in Sports

As far as secrets went, the training center was transparent about how important weight was. Weekly weigh-ins and monthly skin fold (fat tests) were posted on the main bulletin board for all to see. That meant that the classmates at my new school could see the numbers and they would laugh and comment to the female skaters about how much we weighed. I kept my weight issues from my parents as best I could. I never talked about how my coach would jam his finger aggressively into my stomach with jabs like, “You’re getting fat. Your test results will need to be redone because they’re way too low for someone who looks like you.” I was beginning puberty. Nobody cared about why my body was changing, the message was simply that I had to stop looking the way I did. Over the next few years, my weight was a constant stress. I was told that I couldn’t compete until I hit a certain weight, received taunts that I would become obese like my mother and saw pictures of pigs cut out and posted beside our weight charts. At night, I would lay in bed, measuring the hollows between my hips, wishing they were deeper. At dinner, I would alternate between eating peas one by one to stave off hunger and vomiting up whatever food made me feel disgusting, which was mostly everything.In the end, I was never thin enough.

Crying and weakness were unacceptable. His rage spiked when he saw my tears.

Verbal Abuse in Sports Is All About Instilling Fear

I never reported the verbal abuse that I experienced. How could I tell my mom about the lessons spent, standing at the boards, being lambasted verbally by a coach? We could barely afford the lessons as it was. He would belittle and debase students. “How can you be so smart but so stupid?” “Why am I wasting my time with you?” “You’re one of the worst skaters I’ve ever coached.” Oftentimes you could see his frustration mount and then he would step from behind the boards, place his hands on your shoulders and speak through gritted teeth. “Here’s how you bend,” he would hiss, squeezing and pinching shoulders, digging his fingers and bearing his weight down. For the parents in the stands, it looked like a hands-on coaching moment. The skater knew differently, this was a threat.We all knew when a lesson was going badly, and you could feel the tension in the rink. Everyone would avoid eye contact and be on their best behavior. No one wanted to go down with you. Most of the abuse was verbal, but every so often one of the boys would get hit or slapped. We would all recoil and pretend that we saw nothing. Later, in the dressing room, we would exchange knowing glances, but would never speak of what happened for fear of being overheard. To speak out meant that you were the new target, and no one wanted that.

Coaches Aren’t the Only Ones to Blame for Abuse in Sports

The biggest secret of all was one I also didn’t tell my parents about and didn’t dare talk to the other skaters about. I felt that the oldest and most successful skater wasn’t safe to be around. He was more than ten years older than me and would regularly pinch the burgeoning nipples of young girls. I also didn’t tell my parents that all the skaters—male and female—changed in one big room and that this older skater regularly commented or watched the female skaters change. I didn’t tell them that his gaze felt predatory. I didn’t tell them about the day when he gave me a purple nurple, in front of the whole dressing room, and I flew at him, dressed in a bra and pantyhose and twisted the flesh on his chest into a huge purple welt. Or that, in retaliation, he dragged me to the floor, tickling me, but also jamming his hands into my crotch and grabbing my breasts. I snapped and screamed at him, the whole dressing room froze as I screamed over and over: “Don’t ever touch me again.” Later that week, I was called to the coaches’ dressing room and was reprimanded. Standing in front of several coaches, I was forced to apologize for what I had done to the smirking six-foot man beside me. I was out of line, I was told. Like other predators in sport, he was allowed to remain in an environment surrounded by traumatized, vulnerable young girls. Everyone turned a blind eye, but they all knew. The coaches had a duty to keep kids safe, but who is worth more? An Olympic hopeful, a potential Canadian medalist, or a 17-year-old girl?Now, would it have mattered if I had told my parents any of this? It was clear that the adults were complicit, or at the very least, they were focused on results, and not on the future health of the athletes. The best example of this occurred during a competition. The skaters before us, training partners for a few years, suffered a serious accident. The female skater fell face first on the ice, losing consciousness, blood and a few teeth. After watching her traumatic fall, my partner and I were recruited to scour the ice, looking for her teeth prior to competing. Once a bucket of water was splashed on the blood, we took to the ice and performed, sequins reflecting on freshwater, blades cutting through bloody ice. I skated horribly. We didn’t place as well as had been expected and I remember being shoved off the ice, all the while being yelled at. The system was broken, and no one was there to protect the athletes who were part of the system. No one cared if you witnessed trauma: Your job was to perform.

My partner and I were recruited to scour the ice, looking for her teeth prior to competing.

Abusing Athletes to Win is Not Worthy of the Hall of Fame

It’s now been over 20 years since I left that environment. I still have nightmares about what I experienced. I'm left with physical and emotional damage and have nothing to show for it. But the most painful part of all is that the system that did this still exists. The head coach that I trained under is featured in the Skate Canada Hall of Fame. Some are still coaching to this day. Little Girls in Pretty Boxes was reprinted in 2018, 23 years after its first publication. Instead of detailing sweeping changes and progress, it added a new chapter about a culture that allowed a sexual predator to exist. And during those 20 years, the coaches that perpetrated physical and mental abuse continue to be elected into the Hall of Fame because they got results.The culture that encourages and allows physical and mental abuse still exists because coaches value results above all else. But is it worth it? And what would it take to make the system safer for all athletes? Reading headlines and recent articles in the figure skating and gymnastics world makes me think that these sports aren’t interested in the sweeping change that is required to ensure athlete safety, especially for underage athletes. The system needs pawns, and really, does anyone care about the bodies scattered in the pile of rubble, aside the gleaming medals of the winners?

It was my first job out of grad school. It was an opportunity to leave the South and head back up to where the concentration of people who weren’t Bible beaters was high. It was the chance to work at one of the most prominent names in all of sports. It turned out to be a nightmare. I thought they would’ve learned from their mistakes. I thought they would take accusations seriously. I couldn’t have been more wrong.I was the head athletic trainer for the women’s rugby team at Penn State University.

It turned out to be a nightmare.

The Harassment at Penn State Came From All Sides

My time there was marred by harassment from both members of the athletic training staff, as well as the coaching staff and players of the women’s rugby team. It started shortly after I arrived in State College. I was the new kid: Nearly every other athletic trainer had gone to school at Penn State. They were set in their ways, content with the status quo and unyielding when presented with change. I didn’t know their system; I was barely keeping my head above water with no help in sight. I was belittled every time I asked a question. “You should already know this.” “Figure out buddy, we all had to.” I reported to a direct supervisor and the head athletic trainer. They promised me in my interview that I would be mentored and that the athletic training staff was like a family. The reality was that they had their own family. I was the red-headed stepchild.Then there was the team. We had a decent relationship for the most part, except for the coach. She’d gone through five athletic trainers in a five-year span. No one got along with her. She wanted so much despite being a club team, not full varsity. Her team had access to weight rooms, doctors and rehabilitation facilities but that wasn’t enough. I was caught between doing my job (and keeping my bosses happy) and keeping her happy. When she wasn’t satisfied with things, it was my fault for not giving her resources. She fed this idea to the team: I was bad at my job because I couldn’t give her what she wanted. It was small peanuts compared to what was to come.

The Worst of It Unfolded on a Team Trip

The most egregious example of harassment was a spring break trip. The original plan was to travel to England for a week. Then COVID started to run its course. My doctor advised that I should not attend, as I am immunocompromised because I am transgender and take synthetic testosterone. (That’s a fun fact to find out at the start of a global pandemic, that the thing that helps you be your most authentic self is the thing that makes you more susceptible to illness). I informed the head athletic trainer that I was no longer able to go on this trip for my own health and safety. The trainer and some of my peers accused me of making their lives too difficult because they would have to find a replacement. They talked behind my back about how awful I was because of something I couldn’t control. The trip ended up getting canceled and we pivoted to a trip to Atlanta, of which my doctor approved.Then came the harassment from the team and head coach. The participants of the trip were assigned name tags that had degrading titles and compromising photos. The team found pictures of me prior to my medical transition and pasted them to my name tag. I was horrified to see the “old me” on full display to a group of people who’d known me for less than a year. My anxiety went through the roof. How was this OK? Who thought this was funny? We were forced to wear these name tags for the duration of the trip or we would receive monetary fines from seniors on the team (Venmo requests were sent). Other things happened on the trip that did not directly involve me, such as racism and homophobia directed at underclassmen. Due to the sheer amount of bullshit I experienced, I left Penn State shortly after returning from spring break. In my exit interview, I brought these concerns to the attention of HR. This launched a two-month investigation by the athletics ethics committee. I had several phone interviews with members of the ethics and compliance board, the Title IX office and various other anti-discrimination organizations on campus.

I was told there was nothing anyone could do about what happened to me.

The University Is Doing Nothing to Correct Past—and Present—Mistakes

At the end of their investigation, I was told that what had happened to me and the student-athletes was horrible, but it wasn’t “extreme or pervasive” enough to break any university policy. It wasn’t extreme or pervasive enough. The homophobia and transphobia displayed on the spring break trip from hell weren’t enough. I was told there was nothing anyone could do about what happened to me. They were not going to create a no-tolerance policy. No one got so much as a slap on the wrist. I got PTSD. Penn State has learned nothing from its previous scandals. Everyone in the athletics department is willing to fall on their sword to protect the image of the university. They claim they’ve changed, that the Jerry Sandusky case made them step back and address the culture that protected him. It’s clear that they didn’t, and that victims of harassment and abuse won’t get their justice if there is any question of how it would affect the university’s perception. The rules are so lax that what normal people would consider a terrible offense doesn’t even mildly bend the rules. I looked into suing for damages but didn’t have a leg to stand on because there were no violations of university policy. So, this is my way of processing and healing: telling my story.

At the age of 23, I was fortunate enough to land the position of health and physical education teacher and head baseball coach at a high school just north of the Philadelphia border. In my spare time, I was still playing baseball in a summer league, working baseball camps and volunteer coaching within the youth program in my Philadelphia neighborhood. I was, and still am, all in on baseball. My passion came through in my coaching style and I was as competitive as my players, five to six years my younger. I would get angry with them when we didn’t win and expect them to make the plays I was accustomed to seeing executed. I inherited a great program that lacked talent. We did all of the right things except win baseball games. We worked hard in the preseason; we did well academically as a unit (on average, one player would face disciplinary trouble with the school per year); I attended coaching conferences and observed collegiate practices. We improved after my first year but never turned the corner to make the district playoffs. Frustrated and dejected, I turned to veteran coaches for advice. What they suggested would change the trajectory of our program, my professional career and my life.

This was not only a breakthrough for our program, but a breakthrough for baseball in general.

I Started Up a Summer Baseball Camp

The advice I received was simple: “If you want to stop getting your ass kicked, you gotta start working with the township’s youth programs.” In other words, players were coming to the high school program underprepared and underdeveloped. This doesn’t mean the local programs were dreadful—in fact, they were the opposite. They were run by great people with incredible intentions. They truly were there for the kids. But they were missing volunteers with strong baseball acumen. The parents worked hard and put in the hours but they weren’t able to implement the fundamentals at a high level. They were, however, up for learning. After realizing this I decided to offer a coaches clinic, which was well attended and appreciated. It also raised money for our program and gave us a chance to show off for the next generation. A “culture” was in process.I then figured out how to help the players directly. I didn’t have the time during the season, so I started having conversations with community members and came to the conclusion that a summer camp would be ideal. All of the suburban fields were taken or too expensive, so I turned to a Philadelphia Department of Recreation leader and asked for his help. Along with his support, he offered me fields a few miles away, making an easy commute for our future student-athletes. I was also happy to include players from my home neighborhood. My own youth program did so much for me, so I was happy to provide a helpful resource and a chance to improve their baseball experience. The camp was unique because it featured experienced players and new players from the city’s summer camps. Needless to say, our afternoon intramural games were lopsided. The experienced players hit bombs and made all of the plays. The inexperienced players tried not to get hurt and struggled to make contact. The imbalance led to boring games and a lack of interest. In desperate need to spice things up, I started implementing lead-up games like run the bases and stickball. As luck would have it, I had a conversation with a colleague about my problem and he recommended I use a program called Quickball, which he used while working with the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation. I agreed, gave it a shot and thought it was the most amazing baseball enhancement program I had seen within my short career. A modified baseball program that uses a unique, foam ball, Quickball plays “true” in comparison to a baseball. The equipment is user-friendly, safe and allows for fast play. As the name entails, it is a quicker form of baseball. It teaches the fundamentals while not having to slow down the process. This small adaptation changed the quality of the camp and brought more kids out to the yard to play. The increased enrollment provided our high school team with the opportunity to rent time in an indoor baseball facility for winter training. Most importantly, new girls and players of color were enrolling. This was not only a breakthrough for our local baseball program, but a breakthrough for baseball in general. Soon, I became passionate about showing it off to everyone.

We Built a High School Baseball Program With Strong Relationships

As my relationship with younger players strengthened, and my current players became part of a program that provided them with experiences on and off the field, we began winning. The younger players began to dream about playing for our high school, and their parents fostered those dreams and committed to the program long before their sons would step foot onto our field. Eventually, we began an alumni association, attended ESPN’s annual national spring warm-up in Disney World, added a shed and bullpen to our complex and always had great gear to lift school spirit. I consider myself extremely fortunate and blessed to have been the head coach of that program. The school hired me to just run a good practice, adhere to the state and district guidelines, make sure my players were eligible and represent the school in a positive manner while competing in games. Winning was a bonus, but not expected. But we did all of the above, and the accomplishments are what I cherished most in my professional and personal life. Every one of our players graduated; we had a handful of players go on to play collegiate baseball; several earned a baseball scholarship; we were a consistent playoff team; and in my last year as head coach, we won a conference championship. I proudly hang the trophies, game balls and plaques from 2014 in my office today.Seven years removed, now a full-time dad, youth coach and part-time baseball instructor, I am more proud of things I took for granted while I was in the mix. All of our players went on to do well in life—they became great dads, husbands, and are now coaching or contributing to baseball in some way. Our staff worked diligently on stressing the importance of positive relationships and supporting each other. We held them accountable and addressed the little things that broke our team rules. My most talented player was the most difficult one and frustrated all of us. He made it through only one season of high school baseball but eventually played professionally. I never knew if the boys resented him or loved him. Unfortunately, he passed away tragically several years after graduating. At his funeral, I saw how much he was loved when nearly all of his high school teammates came to pay respects. We laughed, cried, reminisced and caught up. I was devastated and heartbroken but found solace in knowing our program had gifted the boys with some of life’s greatest memories, toughest lessons and forever friendships. You cannot emulate the life lessons and experiences baseball provides.

Youth Baseball Programs Have to Invest in All Players

On a broader scale, it tortures me to see the game struggling to retain participation and fans. There has been a shift from committing to the life lessons baseball provides its participants. Instead, parents and coaches have entered our youth players in the “Race to Nowhere!” Youth travel teams and “elite” programs at the high school level have trumped organizations like the Cal Ripken League, Little League, Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, American Legion and good old-fashioned high school baseball. Players retire at ages ten-to-12 if they don’t make the “elite” travel team. I understand there needs to be an outlet for the gifted and talented, but that’s easy to implement.All this being said, the traditional programs are complicit in baseball’s decline as well. Travel programs are popular because they often eliminate “Daddy Ball” politics and seek the best players without regard to which local office their father holds, or which board member neighbors their child. The local programs are usually run by older men that enjoy control as much as baseball. This pushes families away that aren’t in the “clique.” It’s messy. So many families and players are pushed to the brink. Often, they choose to try something else or work their way through the travel circuit as a mercenary, filling roster vacancies or providing depth to a tournament team's pitching staff.Today, I lead a travel program in a 10,000-square-foot facility I co-own in suburban Philadelphia. Our goal is to invest in our players, nurture them and provide the ability to compete freely without fearing instant replacement. We communicate about the lineup, where the kids fit in, and what is needed to achieve the short-term and long-term goals we challenge them to set each offseason. We also work with them around their other sports and school baseball schedule. So far, it’s been great: There has been almost zero turnover and the parents seem happy. Most importantly, the players are enjoying themselves and really growing as athletes and young men. It’s not perfect—we try to get our players to see past “pop times,” “exit velo” and “rankings. We balance what is necessary in today’s game and what is most important to our core values.

Baseball is America’s game, and as long as lifers like me are involved, we’ll always work to get more kids to play ball.

For MLB to Grow, It Must Put in the Work

Major League Baseball is now partnering with major youth and high school organizations, working to increase revenue and interest. Telling every player they have a chance to make it to “The Show” generates a lot of money. But what happens when reality hits? Will they love the game and organization that led them down a path to nowhere? Will parents regret spending $100,000 for a child’s youth and high school career to earn a spot on a Division III roster?” (No offense to any level of college baseball, but only Division I and II programs provide scholarships.) Ultimately, after their journey, will kids still love baseball? Go to games? Introduce it to their children? Apparently, they don’t, and our sport is dying for it. MLB talks about improving youth baseball and inclusion. They create events to “return baseball to the inner-city.” But they don’t invest time and on-the-field consistency for programs to take root. They only tend to work with licensed partners, which pay them a fee to use the MLB brand. This eliminates a lot of great programs and people that are truly committed to growing the game. In order to make baseball more accessible and attractive, there needs to be more creative programming, consistent events and community outreach that involves more than equipment drop-offs and a photoshoot. It also wouldn’t hurt if baseball coaches, hitting gurus and professional players focused their energy on working with young players rather than competing in pissing contests.My high school coaching experience was special and resulted in some winning baseball and great memories. Our success wasn’t because of the coaches' clinics, the summer camps, Quickball or the trips to Disney. It was the time, effort and relationships that were built along the way that made it possible for our program to accomplish the goals we set each season. We put our values at the forefront and focused on leading our players to be the best baseball players they could be based on their God-given abilities. Baseball is America’s game, and as long as lifers like me are involved, we’ll always work to get more kids to play ball. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s always been about.

According to a 2017 survey, over half of high schoolers participate in a sport. So odds are that you, the reader, did so or even continue to play a sport now. Those of you who didn’t play sports growing up probably know an athlete or love an athlete in your life. While sports are often a fun way to get people active, the pressure of playing competitive sports causes a lot of proven mental health issues in athletes. I was put into athletics when I was about three years old. My parents signed me up for gymnastics and a soccer program called Lil Kickers. Since then, I have never stopped playing sports. My dad was my coach for most of my life, sometimes more of a coach than a dad. He pushed me hard from a young age to be “the best athlete I can be.” I put on blinders and focused on sports because that was the expectation set for me.

In my mind, I wasn’t fast enough, good enough or pretty enough to be on the soccer team.

Early Success Set Me up for a Downward Spiral

The first time anybody made a comment on my body, I was in fifth grade. A thin, beautiful girl with an always-perfect ponytail told me that I was a good goalie because I was the only one on our team wide enough to stop the ball. I didn’t really understand why she said this, or what it meant, but I wish I would’ve known that it would spiral from there. I developed an extremely high level of anxiety when I was in about fourth grade, the year I started playing competitive travel soccer. Ever since then, I have struggled with panic attacks, social isolation of my own doing and extreme perfectionism. I continued playing competitive soccer and recreational softball through eighth grade, but my problems only multiplied when I got into high school.When I started, I had the usual doubts about whether people there would think I’m cool, especially because I was going to a new school where I knew a total of three people. The transition to high school is stressful for anyone, but with the persistent thoughts I have, the experience broke me down until I had nothing left. I didn’t make the soccer team my freshman year, and that sent me into what would be a three-year spiral. In my mind, I wasn’t fast enough, good enough or pretty enough to be on the soccer team. Instead, I wound up beginning my journey on the varsity softball team. I loved it. They were a family I had never really had before on the field. The girls were funny, true to themselves and exactly the type of people I wanted to be around. My coaches pushed me—hard. It was exhausting but totally worth it, and I absolutely fell in love with the sport.

Athletics Gave Me Confidence, and They Also Broke Me Down

I also made the decision during sophomore year to join the cheerleading team, despite having no experience, skills or even a real desire to be on it. Immediately, I was introduced to a world I had never seen before. Instead of support, I received snide comments and mental hardships from my coaches, who said I wasn’t pretty because I wasn’t skinny enough. I developed an eating disorder. With this came depression, a monster that would never let me forget that I wasn’t good enough. Between the anxiety, the depression, and the binging and purging, I completely changed. I was no longer the happy, fun girl that I had been for most of my life. I became a bad decision-maker who had no friends. This is really difficult to write about, and I’ve never admitted it before, but I ended up making an attempt on my own life, mainly due to the fact that I hated my body. I loathed waking up every day and being the tall, bulky girl at school and the loud, man-sized girl at practice. I thought I would never be happy with myself. I am lucky to be here today, and I recognize this. Eventually, after getting out of high school sports, I realized I had some things to do. I mended my relationship with my father, and we are now closer than ever. I began to acknowledge the perfectionistic thoughts that have dug themselves into my life for as long as I can remember. I started going to more intensive therapy and breaking down the walls I had built to block out the trauma. I was doing amazing for myself, and I know my parents were extremely proud of me.

The journey to recovery is not an easy one.

I Relapsed, but I’m Still Recovering

When I got to college, a new world opened up. While I am one of the very few women in my major, I absolutely love what I’m studying. I joined the lacrosse team and found a family away from my hometown. I was loving my life and was excited to begin the next chapter. Unfortunately though, with progress comes regression. I began to loathe my body even more than before. I hated that I wasn’t the stereotypical girl who gets all the boys, and instead felt like the big strong athlete who was one of the boys. So, after about six months of completely normal eating, I began the arduous journey back into anorexia. Starving yourself is not pleasant, and I refuse to sugarcoat or romanticize it. Waking up every day and counting how many of your ribs you can see is miserable. Passing out from hunger is scary and horrible. There is nothing fun at all about having an eating disorder. But hearing, “Wow, you’re looking so good,” and, “You could be a model, seriously,” made it worth it for me. The tears from my body literally shutting down— the body dysphoria—was all justified when someone who didn’t know me all that well thought I looked good. The journey to recovery is not an easy one. I am finally getting treatment for the eating disorder that has followed me throughout my life. I am addressing my issues and am trying my best to accept the body that I was given. My body is strong, tall, resilient and allows me to go on all the adventures I missed out on because depression wouldn’t let me. It is exhausting, trying to reach an unreachable standard of perfection, and I have decided it’s not worth putting my life on the line to become someone that society deems good enough. I am good enough. You are good enough.

I was introduced to the world of competitive swimming when I was 11, and I joined the intramural team at my local YMCA. A year later, I was introduced to cutting myself and the world of self-harm. Both remained a fixture in my life for years after. My little intramural crew grew into a competitive team, while I grew into my depression as high school got closer. No one knew how I felt or what I did to myself. I’d cut on my stomach so it would stay under my suit, and I’d hide the emptiness I felt until nighttime in the comfort of my dark bedroom.Things changed in ninth grade. Someone suspected that I was hurting myself, so I found myself in the high school guidance counselor’s office being questioned about my mental health. I denied every question about depression and self-harm, and kept the happy mask on. She believed me, but I was still terrified. I didn’t want anyone to know what I was feeling. Instead of a razor blade on my stomach, I picked at my hands or wrists until I bled so I could make excuses about my clumsiness to mask the self-inflicted hatred. I thought this was an improvement. I started to open up to my friends. I told them my struggle, told them I was clean and lied through my teeth that I was finally happy. In reality, I’d go home at night and lay in bed, silently staring at my ceiling and wondering what was wrong with me. I had friends, I was successful in school, I had a good home life. I had no reason for my soul to feel so completely empty.

No one knew how I felt or what I did to myself.

I Was Unprepared to Handle the Pressures of College

The pool became my escape. I joined the high school team with my older brother, and I was one of the few freshmen picked to practice with the varsity team. I got faster each year. I finally discovered I was a distance swimmer, which led to earning medals in league championships and districts during my junior and senior years. I got into my top college choice, a challenging academic school with everything I dreamed of. I even walked onto the swim team there at the beginning of my freshman year. I made friends and joined clubs and, on the outside, seemed to thrive. Inside was a whole different animal. I convinced myself I was OK, and that the whole “undiagnosed depression and self-harm” thing was just for attention, even though I still kept it a secret. This shield I put up to block the bad feelings eventually cracked. It started in high school. I wasn’t pretty or popular—crack. I had a knee injury that kept me out of the pool—crack. My grandfather, my favorite person in the world, had a long and ugly hospice before he died—crack. My first relationship started and ended—crack. I got involved with some guys who pressured me into things I wasn’t ready for—crack. Then college hit me like a truck. I realized I wasn’t as smart as I thought, and I didn’t get a 4.0 with the minimal effort I was used to. I had walked onto a Division I swim team that I was wildly unprepared and too slow for, and I was coming into the year after a summer off because of shoulder tendinitis. Not to mention, my lack of high school popularity meant I was thrown into a party culture of drinking and sex that I’d never experienced before. I was a swimmer, but boy, was I drowning.

After Surgery, My Darkness Spiraled Further

The spring of freshman year came, and I felt relief. Swim season was over, so training would lighten and I could do more work on my own to catch up to the rest of the team. I was ready to get stronger, faster and skinnier so I could finally fit in. But that plan went out the window when I got a call from my mom. Over spring break, I’d had an MRI to confirm that a round of physical therapy would have my shoulder set to go for the next season. Instead of the happy news I expected, I learned that there was a tear and I needed surgery if I wanted to keep swimming and competing. This was a huge crack in the shield, and it kept splintering through a grueling recovery. I wasn’t in the pool all that summer, and came back to campus sophomore fall even slower, still unable to practice with the team. I split my time between kick sets in the diving well, the stationary bike in the gym and therapy exercises in the training room. It sucked. I already felt out of place being the fattest and slowest girl. Now the freshman didn’t even know my name. I felt like I barely existed anymore.Going into that winter, the shield finally shattered. Between surgery, being raped by a now-ex-boyfriend, having huge fights with close friends and just so many little inconveniences since the spring prior, I once again took the blade to my skin, and with it came such relief. I could control this pain. It was physical, tangible. I knew why I hurt, and why I cried, and there was a physical symbol for all the pain I suffered. It once again became an addiction, something always in the back of my mind, a constant craving to see those drops of blood surface on my skin.I spiraled, and let myself fall into depression. I let it embrace me like an old friend, without realizing it was really strangling me. At a young age, I had seen the effects of a friend’s suicide, and I decided then that I would never do that. I believed I didn’t deserve the relief of death, while my family and friends suffered, but it was incredibly tempting. I was terrified of being alone. I’d stay awake with friends until the sun came up. Eventually, a few of them started to catch on.

I’m still growing into happiness. I still have to tell some people the whole story.

COVID-19 Pushed Me to My Breaking Point

Then, as soon as they figured it out and tried to intervene, we were sent home for this novel virus called COVID-19. I lost my team, my friends, my life. Between online classes and keeping up with friends, I was so exhausted I was ready to burst. Finally, the stress culminated in a breakdown on the phone with a friend. I sat in my empty bathtub, bleeding and sobbing to him when he finally convinced me to stop going through it alone. His encouragement got me out of the tub and got me to write a letter to my parents to tell them what I felt, and admit I needed help. I held onto the letter for days, tucked under my mattress, until I got the courage to leave it for them. I was raised to be strong, to take care of my own problems and be the best. Telling my parents that I was broken made me wonder what they’d think of me.I was met with so much love from them. They helped me find a therapist, and with her, I got medication and skills to combat the darkness. Over time, I shared parts of myself with my friends, some teammates and my coach, and I was met with so much love and support that I never expected.I wish I could say I am fully recovered and got all the help I needed, and that things are perfect now. But it’s still been just a few months. I’m still growing into happiness. I still have to tell some people the whole story. I’m still finding the medication cocktail that allows me to function, and I’m not quite clean from self-harm. I spent the last semester learning remotely, along with the rest of my school, and while I’m so excited to get back on campus, I’m also terrified. I’ll have to meet all the new freshmen on the team. I’ll have to learn to live in a weird pandemic while away from home. I’ll have to tell my coach and maybe my teammates why I have scarred lines on my upper thighs and light ones down my arms. I’ll probably cry a lot. I’m worried about the changes, and how they’ll affect me. I still have catching up to do in strength and speed with the rest of the team, and I have challenging classes that I’m bracing myself for.As scary it is, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m no longer alone. I have wonderful teammates to cheer me on through the hard sets and the hard days, and I have friends who will call me and come knock on my door or bring me food on the days where getting out of bed is impossible. I have my coach telling me I don’t need to be a rock star every day, and that sometimes it’s enough to just be alive and maybe smile. I have my therapist and family, and so much love that even when I feel empty, there’s something or someone there to fill me up. Wish me luck.

Tom and I met on a dating app while traveling. I asked him to tell me a secret, and he dropped a real stunner: that he’d spent years in his early twenties living as a woman. Despite taking steps towards medically transitioning, Tom had been unsure whether he could fully commit to the process. Living as a man now, he sometimes wanted to be a woman, but living as a woman he’d wanted to be a man. He finally concluded that no amount of medical intervention would “really’’ make him a woman.At first, as we kept dating, I was understanding—after all, that was then and this was now. Tom was adamant he wouldn’t transition again and that he was settled as a man. When he expressed his feminine side, it was often by taking over domestic chores, an indulgence I was more than happy to oblige.I wanted to be around Tom every moment of the day. As we wandered the cities of the Caucasus, hands drifting towards each other, I knew that I wanted to break my three years of celibacy and have sex with him. I texted my friends that this might be The One.Despite having quit medically transitioning years ago, Tom’s past estrogen treatments lingered in the form of budding breasts and soft, curvy hips. Every time he unselfconsciously whipped off his shirt I’d avert my gaze. I was only comfortable having sex if the rest of our bodies didn’t touch; when I eventually admitted how I felt, he told me I was shallow.

The doubts grew louder.

What You Think of the World and How You Feel in a Relationship May Not Always Match

I had always had the utmost respect for trans people so my aversion to being involved with one forced me to question my sense of self. I couldn’t help worrying about a future with Tom, a future in which he might realize he’d been in denial. I spotted the little pink packet of pills poking out of his wallet, supposedly left there for comfort.The doubts grew louder. Did he really no longer consider himself a woman? He confessed how he felt sick with envy passing women on the street. I was jealous and insecure. Diving into the familiar cool of McDonald’s to escape the Tbilisi heat, I fretted about the sexy server with her red lipstick, whether he wanted her or wanted to be her.The relationship collapsed before it started.On his way back to New Zealand, he spent a few days in Bangkok. Sent me photos of freshly waxed legs.Back home, he announced he’d decided to resume transitioning; if she couldn’t get a girl to be with her, she may as well become one.That day I walked out of work in the middle of my shift, bought a bottle of vodka, and got riotously drunk in bed. She wanted enormous boobs, she said. Sent defiant photos of her in a dress, toenails painted electric blue. Told me to lighten up. Just a bit of fun.

This combination of compassion and venom confused me.

Gender May Be a Construct, but It’s a Damn Powerful One

They say gender is fluid. I was woke! I could accept that. But I couldn’t reconcile in my head having a lesbian relationship. I didn’t feel right touching anyone’s breasts sexually, let alone breasts bigger than mine.I am cripplingly insecure about my own body, so why was I judging someone else’s so harshly? While I knew in my heart I would never be attracted to women, a friend’s suggestion that my distress was down to homophobia crushed me.I was angry with Tom for what I perceived as putting me in this position. I was angry about being invalidated; I ranted and raged.This combination of compassion and venom confused me. I had been horrified when, on reconnecting with a friend from high school who was now a doctor, she announced that body dysmorphic patients need therapy instead of surgery. I was appalled when J.K. Rowling made the case against trans women belonging in women-only spaces. As a classroom assistant, I took extra time to look out for the transgender kids.But now I was disoriented. Trans people experience so much fear of rejection and I had justified that fear. Why was I so shallow? If it wasn’t for me Tom would still be living life as a man! Lighten up, it’s all just a bit of fun!I ended up in therapy.As angry as I felt, and sometimes still do, I know she didn’t deliberately mislead me. She was just confused and in denial. I’m trying to work through my resentment.A year has passed and we don’t speak anymore, though she sent me a photo a few months ago of her vivid tangerine hair—inspired by mine, apparently. I hope women now pass her on the street and feel sick with envy.