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Unlike other minorities, who are heavily recruited and fawned over by campus administrators, my presence on campus is viewed very differently. People like me, you see, have been all but banished—our presence thought to be a cancer to the “inclusive” environment of higher education. After all, to be anything other than a political progressive on a modern college campus brings with it the risk of exposure and the penalty of ostracization—or worse, career death.Not even the 1960s-style liberals are safe anymore. Their commitment to free speech and academic freedom having faltered under the “progressive” ideals of identity politics, mandated support for diversity agendas and a level of groupthink typically seen only in religious cults.So, if those affable 1960s liberals and their quaint notions of freedom can be intimidated into silence, imagine what it’s like to be a political conservative—the arch-nemesis of progressives—working on a progressive campus.

I held a secret from them.

It Was Easy to Hide My Political Opinions, for a While

My career started like most others who earn a doctorate in the social sciences and humanities. I took a job at a respectable state school and started learning the ins-and-outs of teaching, conducting research and campus politics. After lots of work and some success, I was lucky to be hired by a top social science program in the United States. Indeed, the first half of my career was hardly unusual. I taught my classes, published one paper after another and eventually was recognized as a serious scholar. I served on editorial boards of scientific journals, reviewed grants for various funding agencies and was invited to be on the boards of academic societies.I was on an upward arc. I had friends and colleagues I liked. I attended parties, socials and meetings where we enjoyed each other’s company—laughed and told academic war stories. But I held a secret from them. After years as a political liberal, I doubted the route American liberalism was taking, broadly, but much more so on university campuses. I could no longer pretend that I supported the left’s headlong rush into identity politics, and I began to see more clearly how progressives had used the institution of science to push claims that were too often overstated or even fabricated. Thus, after much reading and soul searching, I reevaluated my views—finding them better aligned with classical liberalism and Burkean conservatism than the new dogma.Then I made the mistake of letting people know.The timing couldn’t have been worse. Left-wing activism, sponsored by the growing presence of “grievance studies” programs and newly-minted diversity czars, realigned campus politics and class syllabi. The environment became increasingly policed by the new regressive left, many of whom exercised considerable campus power. Conservatives, classical liberals, libertarians and even other progressives became targets.It was in this environment where the assault on Charles Murray occurred, where conservative voices were routinely attacked and silenced, and where anonymous complaints landed many in the crosshairs of Title IX inquisitors. Universities poured millions of dollars into rooting out academic deviants, often under the banner of preventing or responding to “bias”—and the regressive left was put in charge of the efforts.

Most of my friends stopped talking to me.

Being a Conservative College Professor Destroyed My Reputation

Few really understand how well-policed modern campuses have become and how many faculty are fearful of saying anything that could bring them unwanted attention.For me, the results were immediate. Almost overnight, offers to write and to conduct research evaporated. Most of my friends stopped talking to me. I was no longer invited out for drinks, or over to the homes of colleagues, or even greeted when I entered the office. My clout and intellectual legitimacy were gone, replaced by growing suspicion about my morals and my motives. Rumors swirled. Everything in my life, it seemed, was opened to scrutiny and reinterpretation.Charges of being a racist came first, followed by other unseemly and patently hollow allegations. Students circulated a petition demanding my job. My graduate students were harassed and, eventually, none would work with me for fear they wouldn’t be employable when they graduated.I had, as they say, become toxic.

I had, as they say, become toxic.

College Professors’ Political Affiliation Can’t Lean to the Right, at All

I’ve had students placed in my classes to act like snitches, been cursed at while attending professional meetings, been disinvited from giving talks at other universities and had a formal complaint lodged against me because of what someone at another university said to someone else about me. You get the point.There is a price to pay for academic work that sometimes confronts progressive narratives, but that price pales in comparison to coming out as a scholar with politically right leanings. You see, I’m not for gun control, affirmative action, abortion or nationalized healthcare. That said, I’m also not opposed to reasonable efforts to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the seriously mentally ill, nor am I opposed to making every effort to ensure a diverse hiring pool is achieved. I don’t want abortion banned, just regulated, and I realize people need healthcare—I’m just not sure nationalization is the best route.These views hardly qualify me as “right-wing,” except on campus, where dissent qualifies one to wear the label. Labels, too, matter. Every profession has its coded language—that is, words used that mean something very different to those inside the profession. For academics, calling someone “conservative” is tantamount to calling them a racist, sexist, homophobic and stupid—simultaneously.It is a term of derision, contempt and mockery, the use of which is reserved for individuals and groups they hate. If “hate” sounds hyperbolic, I can assure you that hate is exactly the level of emotional intensity that typically accompanies use of the term. Quite literally, I’ve listened to colleagues openly proclaim their hatred of “conservatives,” often with the qualifier “fucking” used for emphasis. Never have I witnessed anyone correct them or dissent or even suggest that such comments might be unwelcome or unnecessarily abrasive.

Even Hiring Decisions Are Affected by Political Beliefs

Malice often slips into other academic areas, such as hiring. To be certain, I’ve never witnessed any direct exclusion of applicants based only on their politics. What I have witnessed are hiring committees examining the social media accounts of applicants to verify their race and gender, and to see if there are any indicators of political affiliation.Belong to a group they don’t like—especially the NRA—and your chances drop considerably. Belonging to the ACLU won’t necessarily get you the job, but it certainly won’t disqualify you.If discrimination is to be found, it comes by way of race and gender. Here, they no longer try to hide it. In open meetings, for example, it is not uncommon to hear colleagues defame white men or to push for hiring only blacks or women. Either way, they don’t define their actions as discriminatory, but as moral. This is one reason I’m convinced that most liberal faculty don’t see the biases that benefit only them and that harm others. When bias is seamless and unchecked, it is invisible.I wish I could tell you that I was strong throughout all of this, but I wasn’t. I felt the cold sting of rejection, especially from those I once considered friends and colleagues. I felt helpless as my character was assailed by cowards who hide in the shadows casting aspersions, and I felt anger, followed by despair, knowing any protest would intensify their cruelty. I’ve felt alone and alienated from a career I once loved, but above all else, it has been the loneliness that has been most difficult to endure. Scholarship, for me, was also very social.

I Still Support Universities, Despite How I’ve Been Treated

Despite my experiences, I still believe in the promise and mission of higher education. A healthy and vibrant university system is a net positive for any country, but especially for one that places so much weight on educational credentials and scientific knowledge. However, the long-term vibrancy of our system is no longer guaranteed: cracks in support are already showing. No institution, much less an educational institution, can survive when captured by partisan zealots. While political conservatives have already been marginalized or purged from most campuses, there is every indication the zealots have turned their eyes towards other liberal and progressive faculty who do not walk in lockstep. If you care about higher education, you should care that the necessary ingredients of freedom of thought, speech and dissent are waning under the corrosive agitation of progressive activism.There are good people in academia, many of them, but the zealotry of charlatans creates awkward sets of incentives that silence the majority. Precious few are willing to risk their careers and reputations standing up for their beliefs. They go along because they are rightfully afraid they will become targets and that their lives and careers will be negatively affected. Why, after all, would professors, many of whom enjoy tenure protections, elect to remain silent? Because they have seen what happens to those who don’t.

High school is the milestone of a teenager’s life: the adventures, the classmates, homecoming, prom, football games, all that. But the experience is different from those of us who don’t blend into the all-white crowds at schools like mine. Students with perfect white skin will never know what it’s like to be the only brown person in the packed bleachers of a football game. They won’t know what it’s like being the only Hispanic in a class of 30 students. They’ll never feel the anxiety of having to pick and choose what they should and shouldn’t talk about in front of a room of white students for fear of being judged. But I do. I’ve sat in classrooms with my hand raised, but I always seemed to blend into the background. I never heard my name being called. It was always someone with a bright white hand. Now, I’ve been called on. It’s my turn to speak. It’s my brown hands that are writing. I’m no longer “the Mexican girl" in the back of a classroom. I’m just a girl, and I’ve made my way up to the front.

Lost in a Sea of Whiteness

The first day of school is always nerve-wracking. It’s a new year, a clean slate and you never know what to expect. The only thing I can be sure of is that there won’t be many other people who look like me. My school is predominantly white. Every year I walk in assuming I’ll be the only Hispanic there. If I’m lucky I’ll be one of three. This is the image to keep in your head: 30 students, one classroom and a girl who looks nothing like everyone else. The beginning of the school year always includes a period of getting to know our classmates and learning everyone's names. For me, it always goes one of two ways. I might go in and say my Spanish name as my classmates stare at me, then at each other. Or they’ll ignore me and not bother to try to remember my name or face. Either way, I’ll have to hear my name constantly mispronounced, even when I’ve said it correctly day after day. Sophomore year: My first period was geometry. It was good. I considered myself lucky because there were two Hispanics including myself. My teacher was nice. I was happy. Second period came and again I felt lucky because I was one of three Hispanics. I love English: It's where I do what I enjoy the most, which is writing, even though it’s also the scariest, because we’re required to share our writing with the whole class.Classroom 642, where I had history in the fourth period, is where everything went downhill. For me, history is the most daunting class after English. This time I was the only Hispanic in the room. As an icebreaker exercise the teacher assigned us partners to exchange information about our lives, and then we’d go around and introduce each other. I mentioned to my partner that I’m Mexican-American and that’s how he decided to introduce me: He stood up and said, “This is the Mexican girl.” Everyone stared, giggled and whispered to one another. I, on the other hand, felt embarrassed. I put my head down on my desk and felt a tear fall onto its surface. I felt disrespected. Walking into that class as the only Hispanic was already hard enough. My partner’s introduction just made it worse. I wasn’t embarrassed about people knowing my ethnicity, because that’s the thing about me that I'm most proud of. I was embarrassed by the fact that out of everything I told my partner, this is what he remembered. This is how he wanted to introduce me. Even if he didn’t mean to, it doesn’t change the fact that he hurt me. I’ll never forget it.

He stood up and said, 'This is the Mexican girl.'

Nonwhite Students Have to Work Twice as Hard

Every year I try to walk into school with an open mind, but it really is difficult. Not everyone likes having to share a room with a “Mexican girl,” let alone becoming friends with one. Believe me when I say it’s hard to make friends with a white boy or girl when you are clearly not one yourself. We don’t share the same lifestyle, and half my history is different from theirs. Some white students would talk to me in class, but outside of it, when they were around their friends, I couldn’t even get a smile back from them. I guess it’s only okay to talk to one of us Hispanics when we're reading Romeo and Juliet, but not when we’re doing something else. I’ve always believed that Hispanic students have to work twice as hard as white ones. For us, not everything is set. College isn’t always a choice on the table. It’s not something we feel promised. If we need scholarships, we have to look for them. We have to learn ourselves, because we aren’t every teacher's priority. We can’t ever forget that our white classmates come before us—they’re first and we’re second, always. That’s just what most teachers were taught to do. But we can’t complain, because at least we’re able to attend a predominantly white high school, right? At least we are getting not only an education but the school activities, right? The truth is, all school activities are run by white kids. Hispanics aren’t encouraged to be a part of them. I bet they don’t even notice if there are no brown kids on the bleachers at school games, or on the dance floor of homecoming and prom. All they care about is that their high school experience goes as planned.After 13 years of school, speaking in front of my class frightens me. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t speak at all for the whole eight hours—not because I don’t have anything intelligent to say but because my white classmates don’t understand. They couldn’t care less what a “Mexican girl” has to say. I always have the same conversations with my teachers when it comes to presentations. They always say that it’ll get easier if I start doing it more, but will it? I’ve been told the same thing since third grade. I'm now a junior in high school and it’s still not easy. If I get up from my seat in the back and stand in front of the students with white skin, will I actually be talking to them? Will they actually listen and think about what I’m saying? Or will they go blind and deaf as soon as I step up there?

Schools Talk About Diversity; I Don’t Feel It

Here’s the thing: I can't blame my classmates for it. They have been trained to only look at what is white; the same thing goes for some teachers. To this day, I haven’t convinced my teachers to offer me alternatives to giving presentations. I always end up in front of the class anyhow. But every time before a project that involves speaking, I have to look hard at the topics and choose something that doesn’t involve much from me. I always pray that we aren't asked to speak about personal stories. I can’t simply go up there and start talking about my family’s history, or who they are and where they come from. Anything I say can be misunderstood. Anything I say can be used against me.I wish it were different. I wish my Hispanic classmates could get as excited as my white classmates when big dates came around. I wish the whole school could enjoy our high school years as a united student body. I wish that when I opened my school yearbook I saw pictures of all kinds of students—not just the beautiful white ones but the ones with beautiful colors. But it’s still just a wish upon a star, one that hasn’t yet become true. Don’t be fooled by what schoolboards say. They like hearing the word “diversity” next to their school name, but don’t like actually showing diversity inside the school’s walls. The powers that be still don’t realize that it’s okay to look past the white hands raised in the front. If they did, teachers would call on us who sit in the back. If they knew true diversity, I wouldn’t be the only Hispanic in their classrooms. I would be more comfortable speaking to my white classmates without fearing their judgment. High school should be a place where we can all create memories, not develop fears. It should be the best four years for every student's life—even the ones who aren’t white.

I rushed down the school hallway, feeling sick to my stomach and fighting back a torrent of tears. I gasped as I shoved the door to the bathroom open, struggling to breathe through the tightness in my throat and I quickly checked under the stall doors to make sure I was alone. No one else needed to witness this. I locked myself inside a stall and frantically tried to calm down, but nothing could stop my spiral once it was in motion. You’re so weak, I thought. Why can’t you get over this? How do you always end up back here? You’re nothing. You’re worthless. You could never be enough. I glanced at my phone, remembering the words of a friend who’d noticed I was upset before class. “Text me if you’re in trouble,” he said. “I’ll leave class if it’ll help you. Just please tell me.” For a brief moment I wanted to text him, but even as I imagined it I knew I wouldn’t. I was too ashamed, too embarrassed, too afraid to reach out. I hate you, I told myself, the thought drowning out every other noise in my head. I hate you.I hate you.I hate you. You deserve to be punished. You deserve pain.And with that thought, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I reared back and banged my head against the stall door, thankful that no one else was there to hear.

Self-Harm May Look Unfamiliar

Self-harm and depression aren’t topics that people are usually comfortable talking about. And although the subjects are becoming slightly less taboo, people often have a certain image in mind when they think of them: the stereotypical teenager who wears long sleeves to cover scars from where they have cut to release the pain they feel inside. But that’s not my story.I’m not saying those kinds of kids aren’t real. I know multiple people who have turned to cutting as a way of coping with the sadness and emptiness they feel. But what people often don’t understand is that there are many other forms of self-harm, and many other types of mental health issues that teens face that aren’t discussed as openly. Banging body parts against other surfaces, for example, is one form of self-harm that’s more common than you may realize. There’s also burning, punching yourself and pulling out your hair. People hardly ever mention these, and this silence can have serious consequences. In my case, I wasn’t even really sure if I was technically self-harming until I got up the courage to confess to a youth leader what I was doing. My motivation for self-harming also didn’t fit into the typical mold. I wasn’t trying to release pain, the way people often imagine. At that time in my life, I’d fallen so deeply into a cycle of self-hatred and negative self-talk that I truly believed I deserved to suffer. Banging my head against that bathroom stall was a way of ensuring that I did. Others choose to self-harm because their depression has made them feel numb, and they just want to be able to feel something.

Pressure on High Schoolers Is Getting Heavier—We’re Starting to Crack

It might surprise you how common mental health issues really are today, especially in high schools. High school life today can be an amazing experience, but it’s also clearly flawed and often toxic. There’s extreme pressure on students to perform and succeed—to get good grades and high test scores, but also to participate in extracurricular activities and be “well-rounded.” The importance of college means that we’re expected to plan for the rest of our lives while we’re still teenagers. Not only are we supposed to perform academically, but we also have to perform socially. There’s immense pressure to be popular, have lots of friends and to be physically attractive. This pressure also translates into a competition for Snapchat followers and Instagram likes. Technology lets drama and gossip run wild.Many teenagers crack under this pressure and begin to struggle with various mental health issues. I was 15 when I started self-harming, a little over halfway through my sophomore year. But mental health issues have been an almost constant concern in my life throughout high school, because I’ve spent so much time trying to support struggling friends by listening to their stories and looking out for them. I have had friends who cut. I have had friends who starve themselves. I have had friends who’ve been hospitalized. I have had friends who are suicidal. At this point, everyone knows someone who’s suffering in silence.

We Can Turn Self-Harm Into Self-Healing

The summer after my sophomore year, I was able to start seeing a counselor and begin healing. I learned new coping techniques for my depression, and new ways to keep myself from self-harming. I spent time working through my pain and getting to the bottom of the lies that I was telling myself. I finally learned how to love and value myself. Sometimes I still struggle. I often speak negatively towards myself, and occasionally I feel the urge to hit my head again. But things are so much better for me now than they were before, and I’ll be forever grateful for the chance that I had to get help.

We Need Solutions: Here’s Where to Start

If you are reading this and you are struggling, I want you to know a few things that I have learned from my experiences.You are not alone. It’s okay to get help. It’s not weak to admit that you are struggling. In fact, it’s one of the strongest decisions you can make.Be patient. Healing is a slow and difficult process. But it will be so worth it in the end. You aren’t defined by your struggles. You are so much more than just a depression case, an anorexic or a cutter. You’re an amazing, unique, wonderful human being, who deserves to feel happy and to be loved, especially by yourself.If you’re reading this and you aren’t struggling, then maybe you know someone who is. Maybe you don’t. Either way, I have a message for you too.Keep a lookout for people around you who may be suffering. If you’re worried about someone, don’t be afraid to reach out. Sometimes all it takes is one person to start someone on the road to healing. Don’t assume you know what somebody else is going through or exactly how to help them. Take time to listen to what’s going on, then ask how you can help.Don’t treat people who are struggling with mental health issues as if they’re defined by their issues. We are all so much more than the things we struggle with.

“They can’t fire you,” my roommate explained. “You didn’t do anything!”I glanced her way as I spit toothpaste into the sink. Then my gaze fell to the ground as I tried to convince myself that what she was saying was true.“Yeah, you know what? You’re right. I didn’t do anything. Everything will be fine.”A few days earlier, word had spread around the campus of our Christian college that a resident advisor in one of the dorms had been fired, and as much as the school’s administration tried to cover it up, we all knew why. The mere mention of a same-sex relationship or encounter was enough to get you sent to mandatory counseling. It didn’t take much imagination for us to put it together.

All I could think was: I’m next.

Can You Be Fired for Being Gay? You Definitely Can.

Shortly after the firing, the rest of the resident assistants had a secret meeting. We pooled into a small apartment to be briefed on the situation. I don’t remember much about what was said. All I could think was: I’m next.The following day I received a phone call from my boss, the head of residence life, asking me to come to his office for a talk. It would be the first of eight meetings that I’d have over the next 24 hours. From his office, I went to the counseling center, to my own personal counselor off-campus, back to campus to meet with the head of the counseling center and finally back to my boss’ office again—where I answered the same questions I’d answered just a few hours before. Each meeting had different elements, but all shared the same goal of determining whether my presence was a risk to the campus.The ultimate decision was up to the school’s president and vice president. In each meeting I went to, I was told that all the information I shared would be reported back to them. What I didn’t know was that they’d already made their decision. Ten minutes after it ended, I received a phone call to come to my final meeting, where I was brought into the disciplinary office and greeted by a face that I knew well. I had been a discipleship group leader in one of her classes the year prior.She had tears in her eyes. Turning her face toward me she said, “I’m so sorry to do this, but the university has determined that you are a risk to the campus and we need you to move out of your dorm by noon tomorrow.” I remember asking why, but I already knew. Later I would find out that the wealthy parents of a few students had called and complained about gay RAs. They threatened to pull their children from the school and pull their funding for new buildings that were already being constructed on campus. It was the worship of money and devotion to fear that determined my fate that day.

It was the worship of money and devotion to fear that determined my fate that day.

Being Fired Sent Me Spiraling Into Depression

I remember walking out of that meeting, not being able to feel anything. Five more meetings followed and carried on late into the night. I packed and moved out the next morning, storing all of my belongings at my friend’s place and sleeping on her floor.The first night, I laid on her bedroom carpet, surrounded by the boxes holding everything that I owned, and thought back to my roommate telling me that they couldn’t fire me. But they had. They’d wielded their power as a private Christian university to throw me away. I’d given everything to the university—to my friends, colleagues, professors and bosses. I’d led countless groups and events. I was consistently pouring out all of the love I had within me. But there I lay, flat on the ground, outed to the entire university, with no home, no money and no job.I honestly do not know how I managed to graduate the following semester, or how I’m still here today to write down these memories. At the beginning of 2016, I was admitted to a mental health facility after a suicide attempt. On the night I tried to take my own life, I writhed and cried on my bedroom floor, begging, “I just want to be free.” I had grown tired of carrying my own story—the memories, the grief, the betrayal.

I had grown tired of carrying my own story—the memories, the grief, the betrayal.

Getting Fired for Being Gay Was My Ticket to Freedom

Little did I know I’d end up getting free after all, at a hospital alongside other women who wanted the same thing. Twelve of them watched me be wheeled into the ward. After being processed, I sat down at the family-style table in the middle of the room. A few other women were coloring, and without a word, they passed me the colored pencils. Just like that, I was welcomed into their circle. We were women who had been chewed up and spit out by the world, carrying more spiritual weight than our bodies could hold. Yet we came together in this dark and awful place and offered each other what the world had denied us: a place where we felt welcome. We made it for ourselves, with matted hair, no bras and worn scrubs.A couple of days into my stay, one of the women came up to me and asked me about myself. Her first question was, “So do you have a boyfriend?”I laughed, “No, I’m gay.”She quickly replied, “Well, do you have a girlfriend?”We both laughed, and as I smiled, I found myself lost in wonder at how simple and easy this part of my life could be.Maybe I didn’t have to explain myself to every Christian friend who wanted to know how I thought being gay was acceptable. Maybe I could leave that whole community behind and start over among people who would accept me.Maybe I could just be me.Maybe I could be free.

“It’s COVID-19 coffee. It’s just like normal coffee but it has a margarita in it and also no coffee.”“Can we all agree to temporarily raise the bar for what's considered an 'alcoholic’?”"Another videoconference happy hour! I'm going to end up an alcoholic…"My anxiety ticks up a notch with each “drinking in quarantine” joke I read. They seem harmless, but they can trigger anxiety and painful memories, not only those in recovery for alcoholism but those who have (or have had) an alcoholic partner. When I hear one, all I can think is: People really are going to have drinking problems by the end of this.I want to scream from the rooftops that alcoholism isn’t a joke.But still, the jokes come. My sense of humor is typically dark, but I don’t think joking about “becoming an alcoholic” during quarantine is funny at all.

I want to scream from the rooftops that alcoholism isn’t a joke.

Joking About Alcoholism Wasn't Exactly Rosy Before

Even before the pandemic, I already believed that alcohol is used too widely as an unhealthy coping mechanism and that too many social scenarios revolve around alcohol. But how large a statement—and what altogether different narrative—it is too see liquor stores be classified as “essential” businesses and carry on when nearly all others were closed. I literally still can’t get toilet paper at my local grocery store, but I can get alcohol just about anywhere that’s open. I can even have it delivered.We’re living through the perfect storm of substance abuse triggers right now. We’re stressed out and anxious. We’ve lost healthy coping mechanisms such as gyms and socialization. A lot of us are having financial and relationship problems. Add in enforced isolation, lack of in-person AA meetings, and an overwhelming sense of uncertainty to the mix, and I fear many people who were on the edge of addiction may be headed there full-force now.I worry for those struggling with addiction. I worry for those in recovery. I worry for those who have crossed that invisible line into something problematic. And I worry for those like me who may ultimately have their life changed forever.I’ve never had an issue with alcoholism myself, yet my life is forever affected by it. Being close to someone suffering from addiction often coincides with deep trauma. I know firsthand. Even two years after leaving my abusive and alcoholic boyfriend, I still wake up in a panic from intense nightmares, still live in a constant state of anxiety, and still get weird around alcohol—all of which are signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

We’re living through the perfect storm of substance abuse triggers right now.

PTSD Isn't Just for War Vets

PTSD is silent, elusive and waits in the shadows to attack when you least expect it. It’s still associated with war veterans, but anyone who experiences trauma can have it, even if you (or anyone else) don’t feel like what you’ve been through is serious enough to qualify. Let me assure you that being with an addict is serious enough.I spent four years of my life on an emotional rollercoaster. That might not be a good comparison, actually: There weren’t many peaks. I’d just convinced myself there were enough to make it feel worth sticking around for all the lows. Two years later, all I remember are some of the worst moments of my life.I remember the time my grandpa was in the hospital and my boyfriend showed up completely wasted. The first time I had to go pick him up out of a parking lot because he was passing out at seven in the morning, and all of the countless times after. The times I was terrified of getting in the car with him but even more scared of what he’d do if I refused. I remember the times I found liquor bottles hidden underneath the mattress, behind the truck seat, under the bathroom sink and in the toilet tank.What’s particularly scary, and harder to see, are the non-physical forms of violence that come with an alcoholic partner. Mental, emotional and sexual abuse were things I lived with on a daily basis for four years, and they only got worse the more he drank. It’s a common pattern: Over half of domestic assaults in the U.S. are committed after the perpetrator has been drinking.I’ve always struggled with my mental health (I’ve been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, ADHD and PTSD), and when I had an alcoholic partner I found myself in an even darker hole than usual. I sometimes thought that suicide was my only way out. Leaving an abusive partner isn’t always as simple as some suggest. We were tied together financially, and I had more to lose in a split than he did. Beyond that, I’d been gaslighted for four years into thinking I had nothing to offer the world, that no one else could ever love me, that I was fat and disgusting.Of course, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario. Many recover and are on good terms with their exes. Not everyone who has an alcoholic partner suffers from PTSD. Not everyone who struggles with substance abuse is abusive. And not everyone who’s in recovery, or who struggles with the negative implications of being with an alcoholic partner, is triggered by alcoholic jokes.But the next time you consider making a joke about being an alcoholic—current pandemic or not—perhaps think about how these words may affect someone else. While I eventually found my way out of that deep hole, and slowly began to realize that I was worth more than the situation I found myself in, I’m still coping with the long-term effects of that relationship and his addiction. Sometimes it’s in the background, or it only visits me in my nightmares. Other times, like the current climate, I’m reminded almost constantly of what I’ve gone through, and what I’m still recovering from. I know I’m not the only one.

I stopped retching just long enough to un-mute myself from the call.“Good idea,” I sputtered. “Let’s ask Leah to—” before quickly swiping a sweaty finger across the mute button just as another wave of hot vomit shot out of me and into the bathroom sink. Not into the toilet—it was occupied.I was sitting on it to bleed out my first fetus. Zoom call number 57. First abortion.We were a week or so into lockdown here in Paris when I started to think something was off. Annoyingly, the symptoms of pregnancy are essentially the same as the symptoms of PMS (huge, aching breasts, cramps and headaches, cravings), so, initially, I didn’t think anything of it. I knew it was something to worry about, though, when I couldn’t stomach a glass of wine. Or a vodka-tonic. Or a cosmopolitan. (During a pandemic, being solo in isolation sure does make you reach for the sauce).Sure enough, the following morning a plastic stick told me there was a croissant in the oven. “Merde,” I said to myself sarcastically, and then laughed into a groan as I remembered that it was also Mother’s Day. Great timing, womb.The punchline quickly wore off, though, and the horror began to sink in.

How the Coronavirus Makes My Abortion Story Different

I genuinely had believed that I was barren based on an absolute bare minimum of scientific evidence (polycystic ovaries and both a raging fear and loathing of pregnancy). I was convinced that my terror, hatred and anxiety had burnt away my womb into a desert.Of course, because the toast always lands butter-side-down, I’d made my Nobel Prize-winning discovery during a global pandemic, in a country whose language I do not speak fluently, and at a time when we need permission slips to leave the house. France is as socialist as nations come, but the thud of horror winded me in the chest as I wondered if abortions would be considered “essential medical services” during the confinement, and had a flash of me growing more and more pregnant until all this was over. It felt a bit like the scene from Twilight when Bella’s vampire baby is killing her from the inside out.Doctors' appointments were down to less than a skeletal schedule, filled with what I assumed were worried Parisians fearing that they had COVID-19. When I clicked the “English spoken” filter to show “appointments near me,” that schedule dissolved to nothing.Well, this would be a fantastic challenge to test both my skills in French and in mime.In a queue ten meters long of just three people, I waited outside the doctor’s office for my appointment. A kind pair of eyes above a mask welcomed me inside and went through the basics of using the French medical service. This much I understood. When it got to the actual question du jour, though, I had to apologetically ask if he knew any English.The shame of it. Of not knowing the language. Of taking up space. Of what I was about to ask him. I am still furious at this shame. I know that I have no need to feel shame about a choice that is better for both me and what would have been a very therapized child. I know that abortion is a human right. I donate to Planned Parenthood; I write articles about it. I debate it with friends all the time and still, I was feeling this shame? Even now, I write this piece anonymously so that future employers won’t Google me and find my abortion story.

The Process of Getting At-Home Abortion Pills in Paris

The shame. The shame of feeling shame.The doctor, of course, did not share this shame with me. As we continued in Franglais, he told me that the French procedures for this involve a blood test, an ultrasound scan and a week of “reflection” before anything could be done.Why would I want to bring a child into the world? Why would I want to force someone to unwillingly exist, to experience the enduring pummeling of a lifetime? Particularly into this existence, where countries are literally both sinking and on fire, and a deadly virus is slinking its way around the globe. Why would I want to create something that would be dependent on me, and that I would, no matter how hard I tried not to, probably end up loving way too much? And possibly losing.The blood test showed that I was indeed avec bébé, and also that I was blood type O positive. (You need to know your blood type in order to receive the most effective and least harmful dose of “the abortion pills”—typically two pills taken in sequence.) The scan showed both that I was about six weeks along and also an image of a little bean just floating along on the lilo of my uterus.After my week of reflection, back to the doctor I went. She watched me take the first pill (mifepristone) in front of her. This pill stopped the pregnancy. The doctor told me to take the second pill (misoprostol) 28 hours later. The second pill causes your uterus to contract so the pregnancy can leave your body. Basically it forces your body to squeeze it all out of you. I’m advised to take it by letting it dissolve between my gum and cheek.

The shame. The shame of feeling shame.

I Thought I Was Prepared for My Abortion Experience; I Was Wrong

“Maybe it’s good that we’re on lockdown,” I thought. “I can work from home anyway rather than have cramps in the office.”I didn’t need my 6 a.m. alarm timer because I was awake all night with unexpected worry. I felt shaky, sweaty and sick, not so much with fear of pain, but more with fear of it not working. I let the tablet dissolve in the gum-spot and placed a sanitary towel as thick as a brick in my underwear. Within an hour I began to get what felt like normal period cramps, slowly increasing in intensity. Nothing unmanageable, and as the pain ramped up, I took some acetaminophen. It was just like a regular period, which was lucky because I had a day full of Zoom meetings, Slack notifications and emails ahead of me.Throughout the day, nausea continued to rise up, hot in my throat. I ran to the bathroom a handful of times thinking I was about to hurl, but it was always a false alarm. The abdominal pain increased and I changed the towel at least twice.

The blood test showed that I was indeed avec bébé.

I Found Out on Zoom What Happens After Taking Abortion Pills

I could feel myself shedding. It was distracting and, during one such Zoom call, the pain really began to get searingly sharp. I was on my laptop and the call was important. Jobs were being dissolved every day thanks to COVID, and I couldn’t afford to make an excuse and leave this call with 12 colleagues and my boss. I could feel the bloodshed change from a steady stream to more of a tsunami, so I muted myself and ran to the bathroom with my laptop, squeezing it with sweaty hands. My camera was off.I got to the toilet just in time for the bowl to receive what felt like a hot load of thick, lumpy jelly pouring out of me. I screamed as I felt it. I knew this was it. This poor bean was making its escape from a life of pain and fear and being loved too much and not enough, and I was surprised (and embarrassed, the shame for feeling shame again) that I’d started to cry.I stifled a sob to listen in to the Zoom call for a second. Luckily another colleague was pitching an awful idea to my boss, so I figured I still had a few minutes. As I let myself exhale again, it wasn’t a cry that burst out of my mouth, but that vomit that had been threatening all day. In what may be my most impressive yoga move to date, I leaned over to the sink while still keeping myself hovering over the toilet next to it and ensured everything leaving me found its way into the plumbing that wasn’t mine.Panting, I rinsed out the basin and splashed water on my face. I sat back onto my China throne. The call was still going and another colleague was pitching an idea. My breathing slowed and I was able to contribute to the call again after 20 minutes of being AWOL, with a pause for the second brief vomit that began this story.The call ended and I stayed in the bathroom with my laptop awkwardly at my feet. Within an hour, the bleeding and the pain sighed back to “regular period level” and the heaving and vomiting stopped.It was over. I could finally have that glass of wine.

The coldest time of each day is the first couple of minutes in the morning, right as the sun breaches the mountains and the heat descends upon the earth below. It was during this time that I realized how cold my saddle was, and how much I regretted leaving my gloves at home. I reached my hands back and put them between the saddle blanket and my horse's back to keep them warm. My dad had told me countless times not to forget my clothes and gear when I came to work, and he was long past the times of lending me his. I was raised on the back of a horse and I knew better.This was my life growing up a cowboy’s daughter: raise them tough and independent, and if you're too slow you'll be left behind. I have never resented this upbringing. I didn’t know at the time it would give me the best foundation my dad could supply me. He made sure I tried my hardest and did everything the guys did. I shoed horses, rode rodeos, raised 4-H and FFA steers to supply my own funds. “Work hard and always respect your elders,” my dad would continually say. “Money doesn't grow on trees and if you can't respect it you don't deserve it.”

Trump Supporters Who Are Women Have Different Values

I grew up in a town of 350, in a school that had fewer than 100 students total, from kindergartners to high school seniors. I wasn’t raised with a political ideology—that happened after I joined the military. I wasn’t raised to use guns as weapons to defend or take human life, either. That way of thinking was acquired from the military, too.My life changed in profound ways once I signed it away to serve my country.I didn’t enlist because I was patriotic. At the time I was enrolled at Western Oregon University studying American Sign Language and interpreting with the intent of being able to communicate better with my dad, who has depended on hearing aids his whole life. But once I’d given college a term as my dad had requested, I decided to leave. He wouldn’t allow me to come home and work on the ranch, so in order to be a contributing member of society, I joined the Army National Guard. Maybe they could babysit my immature self until I decided what to do with my life.Throughout my eight years with the Army, the foundation my dad gave me to build on set me up for survival in life during and after my deployment. He had raised me to be tough and independent. The only feminist trait I grew up with was my father would tell me, “When a woman is in charge she’s a bitch, when a man is, he is just doing his job. Remember this when you go out into society, and do not take shit from no one.”

What the National Guard Taught Me About Feminism

Female equality was never a problem for me until I deployed. I was in Baghdad from mid-2009 through 2010. During that time I went to a mandatory all-female meeting, with all ranks in attendance. We all were seated in a circle and were encouraged to air out our grievances.A particular staff sergeant was complaining that during this deployment she hadn’t yet been allowed to be a convoy commander. While other women encouraged her complaint I spoke up and asked what her convoy security experience was, and what qualifications she had to be put in such a position? Her reply was simple: “I’m a female and a staff sergeant.”This soldier was willing to put everyone's life at risk merely because she held the position to do so and she was female. This was my first real feminist experience, and it did not disappoint. These situations happen every day and this mentality costs people their lives. I knew from that day forward that I would never put my gender ahead of experience and safety. I would never use it for personal gain or power.

My life changed in profound ways once I signed it away to serve my country.

Republican Women Let Their Actions Do the Talking

These movements for female equality and transgender people in the military are all the same. Most of the people protesting aren't even in the military. They aren't sacrificing their lives. They’re on the outside complaining. Instead of actions they just have words. Most women who complain about wanting to be allowed to have a combat military occupation can't even pass the physical standards, but instead of failing and realizing that, they complain that the standards are unfair.Until I started paying attention, I had just gone about my business not even knowing politics existed. Once I was out of my tiny town and into the world, things started changing for me. I saw the vast differences between left and right. These female Democrats and their feminist movements are just like that staff sergeant on deployment. She wasn't there for her soldiers—she was there for her own agenda.Female Democrats in our government are no different. They’re not here for America as a whole because they don't see the whole picture. They can’t get past personal agendas. However, I do believe both parties have to exist to have what America has. They really do complement each other when both parties are working for the same purpose, which should be: America. But it's not.For eight years during Obama, America became soft. We spent our days trying not to offend anyone, making sure everyone in the world was happy, forgetting what is out our back door.Then Donald Trump came along. For once, there was someone who was not a politician running for president. Our Republican eyes opened, like when The Wizard of Oz switched from black-and-white to color. Suddenly there was a man for America. “America First”: How long had it been since anyone heard that?Of course, the first thing that happened was women uncovering his past history regarding comments towards women. So, yet again, they were not and are not seeing the picture as a whole—only for personal gain.

For eight years during Obama, America became soft.

Republican Women for Trump Believe in America as a Whole

There will never be a presidential candidate who checks every single box but, collectively, they fit the mold. This is a continual puzzle every American has to put together when choosing their candidate. You choose the one who checks the most boxes according to your views. I do not believe this was done during Obama's administration. The Washington Post put out an article that said during Barack Obama's candidacy, “Black voter turnout exceeded white turnout for the first time in history.”Since Trump’s election, I have never been so jazzed to be an American. This man is for the people. America comes first and he has no problem meeting opposition head-on. For years it was as if we let everything slide, so as to not ruffle any feathers. Then Trump came in and effectively said if you have a problem, then leave. It’s interesting that this offended people, when before the election these same people said they would leave America if he was elected.We have immigrants here complaining about him. Why? You have your country, why come to ours and complain?But this is the difference between Republicans and Democrats. While Democrats have been fighting anything Trump does for four years, he’s been getting things done, even during a pandemic. He is not here for personal gain but has been fighting the “Mean Girls Club” since he was elected.I refuse to join this generation of feminist movements and entitlement for free handouts and participation awards. I am here for the working American. So is Trump.

I can’t remember the first time he hit me. That seems like the kind of detail you’re supposed to remember, but as hard as I strain, there’s no dramatic moment of change I can recall.The clearest scene in my memory is waiting for the school bus. He grabbed my throat and pushed me up against the wall. I could still breathe but it felt like a warning. He started to grab at my breasts and twist them. I thought he might be able to rip them off. At least ten other kids were watching. I said “no” and he put his hand down my pants and grabbed me.Then, he pushed me away and laughed. I laughed, too. I didn’t know what else to do.I don’t remember many beatings, but bruises I do remember. I had to stay aware of them. I didn’t want anyone to notice, but I also kind of liked them. They seemed to me like a badge of honor or proof of resilience.I was 12 when it started and 17 when I decided enough was enough.It wasn’t until a year after it stopped that I could name what had happened to me. I hadn’t thought of it as physical abuse. It just seemed like playing around had gotten too rough. We were friends and there were feelings. It felt like we were just joking.

I didn’t know what else to do.

The Impact of Domestic Abuse on Victims Lasts a Lifetime

We first met when we were 11 years old. We were in all the same classes and both at the top of the class. I remember that being very important. It made me feel like we were somehow co-conspirators. I fell in love with him quickly. He was intelligent and a little nerdy and he seemed mature to me.In true tween fashion we shared that we "liked" each other, but we never dated. I think that’s what kept me hooked. There was a chance that something might happen without any guarantees and it made me feel like I had to work harder to be liked by him.He would hold my hand and wrap his arms around my waist and it made me feel safe. I felt like I had this dangerous bear on a leash who could lash out at anyone who came near me and hide me in its warm fur.But it wasn’t just flirty messages and holding hands. There were punches and kicks and grabs and pushes. More than once he threw me down the stairs. I think it was part of a joke. I remember him laughing and me panicking as I braced for impact. It was at least 40 steps. I still have back pain.Once, I was changing for sports class and a friend noticed purple and blue splotches up my leg. I had been kicked. When she asked, I said it was an accident while we were playing around. I believed it too. Like it had just somehow happened.That’s the thing that took me the longest to reconcile. I convinced myself so well that it was accidents or just kids playing around that I wondered if I had overreacted. Even now, I’m not sure I disagree.

I still have back pain.

Do Abusers Know What They're Doing? It’s Not Always a Simple Yes or No

What happened to me was a living nightmare. It’s something that no child should have to go through. There are certainly adults that failed me by not noticing what was happening, openly…even in school.As an adult, as a feminist, when I see or hear of anyone in a circumstance of domestic abuse, male or female, I am horrified. There is no doubt in my mind that the abuser is to be blamed and, also, should be arrested. So often abuse ties in with manipulation and control. It’s complex and different in every circumstance that it happens. For me, even years later, I don’t see the intent. I just see a confused little boy who needed help.So, can I blame him? I don’t. Because while I was just 12 when it started, so was he. We were children in the playground and there should have been adults there to stop it. We grew together into a terrible pattern of abusive behavior and I can’t resent him for it when neither of us knew any better.But we should have been taught better. At 12, he shouldn’t have thought it was okay to treat me like that. And how could I have thought it was okay to let him?I wonder now how he remembers it. I haven’t spoken to him since. Would he be surprised by my account? If he told this story I wonder if it would be the story of young dumb mistakes he made in his teens. Or would it be about a girl he used to have feelings for that he messed about with? I’m not sure and I’m not sure that it matters, after all.

“I can’t save any of them.” That’s what I reminded myself, day after day, as I looked upon the faces of the animals who would soon be slaughtered. “Just do what you came here to do,” I would add, locking my eyes forward to concentrate on the task at hand. There’s no time to stop and be sentimental.Inside a slaughterhouse, there’s always work to be done.During the years I was an undercover investigator, I worked at three slaughterhouses in three different states—on behalf of a national farmed animal protection organization. While working, I used hidden camera equipment to document the painful reality of what animals endure on the last day of their lives.I often asked myself how I ended up where I was. Like a lot of people in the vegan movement, I would call myself an animal lover. When I was young, I only had a few career goals. After seeing Jurassic Park, I wanted to grow up and study reptiles. Then, after consuming copious comic books, I wanted to be a hero. I combined these goals and eventually earned a master's degree in ecology, with the goal of doing conservation research to protect wild animals. But, while I was in school, I learned about the suffering of farm animals through a labmate, the first vegan I ever knew in real life.You probably guessed this already, but after a lengthy process, I became a vegan as well. Why wouldn’t I? Not only is meat production cruel, but it’s also notoriously bad for the environment, in terms of land use and emissions. So, it appealed to me as someone interested in conservation. In fact, I was so entranced with veganism and its benefits that I decided to keep my career options somewhat open. I wanted to either end up in field research or in activism. The non-profit I continue to work for today was the first to respond to my resume, which eventually brought me to those slaughterhouses.I ended up working at chicken, pig and lamb slaughter facilities before I retired from fieldwork. I saw cruelty everywhere I went: some intentional and some as a result of companies trying to maximize speed (and, therefore, profits).

At a slaughterhouse, there’s always work to be done.

Chicken Slaughterhouses: Animal Cruelty Bordering on Torture

My first job undercover was at the poultry plant, working live hang. Our one job was to pull chickens off a conveyor belt and wedge their legs in shackles passing by at eye-level. We were supposed to handle 24 chickens per minute, an impossible timeframe for anything even resembling “humane.” The birds would struggle; they would flap their wings or defecate out of fear, releasing feathers, blood and feces everywhere. The other workers seemed unconcerned with their plight. They would tear feathers off to throw at one another, or press the bodies of chickens against the metal conveyor belt in retaliation against their struggling. Sometimes, the workers at the head of the line would take a few steps back and hurl the birds at the shackles like they were baseballs. Often, the birds would successfully end up in the shackles after these pitches. It was easy to see that the workers had practiced this method.

I saw cruelty everywhere I went.

Pig Slaughterhouses: Cruel and Inhumane Methods of Killing

My second position was at a slaughterhouse supplying a household name in pork products. I ended up working two different jobs there, one of which was on the kill floor. Part of the job was herding the animals through chutes and pens until they reached the stunner. Afraid and/or injured, sometimes they wouldn’t want to move—or simply couldn’t. And when the pigs weren’t moving, the workers started to become violent.We had “rattle paddles,” which look like oars with the flat end filled with noise-making beads. Workers would raise these paddles above their heads and bring them down on the heads or bodies of pigs. Several times, I was admonished by others for not doing this. “Hit them! Hit them!” they would yell at me. We also had access to electrical prods, which other workers would use on animals multiple times, sometimes in the face or near the genitals. The sick ones would be pulled by their tails or shoved out of the pens. We were supposed to use a sled to do that, but a supervisor told me they just didn’t have the time.When the animals got past the chutes, a worker would use an electrical stunner on them. The hogs would go rigid and fall down a slide to a conveyor belt below. There, a worker would cut their throats. If the cut wasn’t done correctly, the animal wouldn’t bleed out enough to kill them before the stunning wore off, so I documented several pigs returning to sensibility and attempting to right themselves while they were hanging upside down, bleeding from the gaping hole in their throats. Workers were supposed to stop the line to re-stun the animal, but in one instance I witnessed, they didn’t bother, leaving the animal to suffer as the shackle took him slowly towards tanks of scalding water. I remember a choice quote from one worker: “If USDA were around, they could shut us down.”

The workers started to become violent.

The Lamb Slaughterhouse: Processing Contaminated Meat

My final investigation was at a slaughterhouse for one of the largest lamb producers in the U.S. I spent a few months working in a refrigerated room all day. The supervisor would tell workers to change the “best by” date labels on older products to falsify their freshness. He would help people avoid putting product through the metal detectors to save time, risking contamination of the meat with metal shavings. And when I finally got a position that would help me observe the slaughter process, we discovered that after having their throats cut open, 90 percent of the lambs would move in response to having their tails cut off later on the line, indicating they were potentially still sensible. What we saw was so egregious we decided to file a False Claims Act against the company, which resulted in a historic intervention from the Department of Justice, a settlement and mandated changes to their slaughtering practices.

If USDA were around, they could shut us down.

Slaughterhouse Workers Suffer Too

Slaughterhouse practices don’t just cause suffering for the animals. Meatpacking plants are notoriously dangerous for workers, with two amputations occurring in the U.S. per week. Most of my jobs were basically assembly line jobs, with workers performing the same action hundreds or thousands of times per day. Injuries are common, especially those caused by the repetitive motions on the line. I remember my hands aching every minute while I was employed in live hang, my knuckles red from holding the bony legs of thousands of chickens. In another job, I wore a back brace on top of another because I spent all day carrying boxes filled with lamb meat. I cut myself on knives and metal hangers at the pig plant. More than once, I cried in my car before a shift, anticipating the mental and physical anguish I would endure for the next 12 hours. (And, now, during the coronavirus pandemic many Americans are painfully aware of how disease can spread like wildfire inside of these facilities.)Though all of that is behind me now, it is still the reality for the billions of animals who are slaughtered every year. While I’m retired from undercover work, I’m still very much an activist for animals. As part of my job, I work with footage from other investigators and witness the same cruelty I saw firsthand. But it’s worth it, because I want people to see what I saw, as hard as it can be to watch. Despite the efforts of investigators like myself, there are still so many people who have no idea where their “food” comes from, and what horrible atrocities they’re paying into by buying animal products. My hope is that everyone who is even a little curious about what I went through can take the time to watch some of the footage brought back from these facilities. As someone who was on the inside, I hope the reality of the plight reaches you.

When I was about six years old, my parents dropped me off at their friend’s house so they could go on a date night. They were a young couple; in their early twenties. They decided that they’d entertain me by putting on a movie—it now seems pretty clear that they had no idea what to do with a child because the movie that they chose was none other than Pretty Woman. If you’re unfamiliar with this classic rom-com, the basic plotline consists of a high-powered businessman (Richard Gere) who hires a prostitute (Julia Roberts) to be his arm candy for important social events. Passion, drama and humor ensue: the two fall madly in love. As a six-year-old, I really had no idea what was going on. I remember fast-forwarding through the boring dialogue straight to the sex scenes. I didn’t know exactly what sex was but I found the spectacle fascinating. What were those things in the square packages? Candy perhaps? Why did she refuse to kiss him on the mouth?The trope of the rich man savior and the down-on-her-luck beauty—with brains and a heart of gold—certainly made a lasting impression on me, one that resonates to this day.

The trope of the rich man savior and the down-on-her-luck beauty certainly made a lasting impression on me.

Dating in 2020 Is Basic Capitalism

The American Dream in 2020 seems to be having fame and fortune without really having to do any work. Everything is a commodity: people have become brands. What person hasn’t dreamt of someone sweeping them off of their feet, showering them with gifts, leveling-up their daily experiences with luxury travel, high-end dining, a new wardrobe of fashionable clothes and so on and so forth? When I’ve talked to people about their impressions of the sugar daddy–sugar baby world, they all seem to imagine something like Pretty Woman, or, if they’re jaded, something like a fat grandpa paying a college woman for sex. The truth of the matter is that dating dynamics are much more nuanced than that. Daddies are rarely looking for just sex—if that were the case, they’d go to a straight-up prostitute—and most babies aren’t looking only for additional capital.The beauty of the sugar daddy–sugar baby dynamic is that both parties have agency: both have the ability to say exactly what they want and, then, the other party can either agree, renegotiate, or say no thanks. This kind of blatant honesty in a capitalistic, high-tech world has been utterly refreshing. I’ve tried everything—from the FOMO, toss-away culture of Tinder to the introspective, intimate-relationship-focused world of niche sites like MeetMindful. None of them did it for me in the way that a site like SeekingArrangement does.The motto on the landing page reads, “Where beautiful, successful people fuel mutually beneficial relationships.” From my initial experiences on the site, I’d say they hit their mission statement. There are three main styles of arrangements that are typically made (though, of course, there are thousands of nuanced agreements between parties): experiential, allowance and pay-per-meet (PPM).The experiential-based daddy will take his baby to nice dinners, shopping or on travel adventures. The allowance-based or PPM daddy will pay the baby money per week or month or per each hang in exchange for the baby to spend a particular amount of time with him doing whatever they agree to do. It’s yet another offshoot of the gig economy. Influencers promote everything from clothes to cars on Instagram. People rent their own homes and cars to strangers. You can find someone to design your logo or give you a tarot card reading on Fiverr, build your Ikea furniture on TaskRabbit, deliver your groceries, booze or drug paraphernalia on GoPuff…is it so surprising that dating has become part of the gig world too? So, what about sex?

So, what about sex?

Sugar Daddies Are Real Men

In most situations—dating, work, friendships—we have a formal or informal contract as to what we’re willing to give: how much emotional investment, how much time, energy and commitment. On the site, I claim to be “not your typical baby.” The reason for this claim is that I’m older than the average baby—in my mid-thirties—and I’m looking for actual connections with people, not just a financial agreement. So far, the site has done what it claims: It has helped “upgrade” my relationships. It appears that being a little bit older with my own passions, intellectual clap-back capacity and creative leanings has been a huge benefit in helping me find men who are more on my level than ever before in my dating life. Most of the men have what I’ve always wanted in a partner: confidence, thoughtfulness, assertiveness, playfulness, a sense of adventure, spirituality, goals, the ability to give and to receive. It’s positive masculine energy. We hear a lot about “toxic masculinity,” but perhaps one way to overcome it is by reinforcing the good things about masculinity, while at the same time, not putting up with the bullshit from it. In other words, dating sugar daddies helped me stop dating dudes and start dating men. I came to this conclusion after my very first sugar daddy date. He was 48. We met at a hipster bar in Chicago. We enjoyed some delicious cocktails and a deep conversation about some of the dating pains we had both recently encountered. During the course of the conversation, I realized something: We’ve all suffered and there are different approaches to dealing with it. Some will try to drag you down with them as they’re drowning; others will instead work toward repairing, work toward overcoming. That’s the difference between a dude and a man, a girl and a woman.The other important distinction between a dude and a man comes down to actions over words. A man will do what he says he’s going to do, a dude will talk a big game and never (or rarely) deliver. The daddies I’ve dated have always delivered on their word, and they’ve always wanted to leave a baby better than they found her. We make arrangements every day with everyone we meet. It comes down to what you seek, what you’re willing to give and what you want. The sugar daddy–baby life can be artificial, transactional, vapid or it can be authentic, transformative and empowering. It can be like any other gig or it can actually change your life for the better. Will I ever have a Pretty Woman-like ending to my story? Probably not. I don’t seek to live in a romantic–comedy fantasy. I prefer the real world with real men and women who are working every day to live their best lives—no matter what gig they choose.

Dating sugar daddies helped me stop dating dudes and start dating men.

I’d been a vegetarian my whole life. I realized about five years ago there was a disconnect between what I believed and what I was actually doing—and so I went vegan. That began a domino effect—like a lot of people have—with learning about all of this stuff. I wanted to get involved more and do more for a cause that I really valued.I contacted PETA and asked if I could work as an investigator. I’ve been doing it since 2017. There are lots of stories. I don’t even know where to begin. We have to investigate all sorts of things like entertainment animals, farming animals and the like.I’m a young guy from the UK and have a pretty normal background. It’s not the sort of thing I ever anticipated doing when I was younger: It’s been a challenge; it’s been rewarding, as well.

Animal Cruelty in Slaughterhouses

I’ve been in a few slaughterhouses: sheep and chickens. They are awful places.The role changes depending on the place. Whenever I’m doing investigations, I’m working in the jobs that nobody wants. It tends to be really menial, manual labor work. The job that I had in the chicken processing plant was an awful, awful job. It was the point in the plant where the chickens are coming out of the trucks and they have to be hung up onto the moving line, onto the shackles so they can be carried throughout the whole plant.I’d start in this very small dark room in a line with ten other workers. The whole shift, we picked chickens upside down by their legs and slotted their legs into the shackles. It was really hot, really musty—there was all of this stuff in the air, you couldn’t really breathe properly, and there is all sorts of shit and piss everywhere. The pick rate is insane: You have to pick a chicken up every two seconds. It’s a really stressful, intense work environment and lots of horrible stuff is going on all around you.Pretty much all the time at the chicken slaughterhouse—and fairly regularly at the other slaughterhouses—illegal activities are taking place. In the slaughterhouse and the hanging room, things were happening all the time that were just absolutely brutal. We stood in line in this dark room—you can only really see the person to your immediate left or right—against a waist-high metal wall and there’s a wall behind you. Often, someone would pick up a chicken and out of—I don’t know frustration or boredom—would just lift the chicken up and then swing it down so that the chicken’s head slammed into the top of this partition wall. Sometimes they’d turn around and slam the chicken into the wall behind them.All of this is not allowed. Supposedly if they had been seen doing it, they would have been in serious trouble. There’s a camera just one or two meters away from them at all times with infrared but nothing was enforced.There was one guy who had a real penchant for pulling chickens' heads off. And quite early on when I was working there, he was trying to impress me or something—I don’t really know. I guess he was frustrated or bored. So he grabbed this chicken that was going by on the line by the head and he wrapped his hand around the neck and then just pulled. The chicken was obviously being carried away by the line, and so the body just stretched and stretched and stretched, and then eventually the neck snapped off and the body sprang back. Then he held this chicken’s head up and put it onto one of his fingers, like a little finger puppet. He waggled it around in front of me, making chicken noises. It was really messed up. This was actually reported to the plant while I was there, anonymously, and they didn’t do anything about it. When I left, he was still there.

There was a guy who had a real penchant for pulling chickens' heads off.

Industrial Animal Farming Creates a Horrible Mess

In the sheep slaughterhouses, it’s generally like a poor boy working, cleaning up the floor. There’s blood and shit and guts everywhere and there’s got to be somebody to mop all that up constantly: picking up severed heads, fixing the troughs and sewers and drainage channels.When I’m doing these jobs, I’m not thinking about the environment: I’m just thinking about the animals and trying to identify issues relating to them. But, the atmosphere in the chicken farms: They’re just so incredibly unnatural, so incredibly beyond anything that really should ever be done. These chicken sheds house ten thousand, thirteen thousand birds in one room. You can’t go into these places without wearing masks and protective clothing. I did on my first day and I was coughing for weeks. All of the ammonia and all of the dust and all of the shit that’s littering the shed, at the end of the season, will be cleared out and washed away somewhere.I’ve worked on a pig farm and the lagoons of shit that you get on pig farms were just incredible, acres of land devoted to a pool of feces. I gather that it’s diluted down and sprayed on fields. These operations work at such a scale, they work so fast and they produce so much that the abattoir is just washing blood and shit away all the time—just pools of the stuff—and I can’t imagine that stuff is good for the environment.

There’s blood and shit and guts everywhere.

There’s a Reason People Working in Slaughterhouses Get Sick

People get sick working with animals; those things are inevitable. When I started at that chicken processing plant, I got pink eye within about three days. It was really, really bad. You’re standing in clouds of shit flying around, feathers and dust and all that. You’re bound to get infections. I had a cough at the time so whenever I coughed, my eyes felt like they were going to explode. I can’t imagine how you can work with animals and not anticipate getting sick: When I started that job at the processing plant, all of my colleagues expected me to come down with something. It’s sort of a guaranteed thing. I took a day off because of my eye and they all thought I’d be gone for a week. It’s completely normal.We know that these things cause disease. If you put thousands and thousands of animals in cramped conditions together, it’s perfect for a virus to develop and spread. And that’s why it doesn’t exist in nature. It’s no surprise and it’s just shocking that nothing is really being done. There’s no change being instigated. As far as I understand it, the pig and poultry farms are the worst violators because of the conditions and the way that a virus can spread quite quickly there. All of this industrial animal farming is, as far as I’m concerned, the main culprit for the spread of disease. And not to mention, the use of antibiotics on the farms. I saw everyone coming down with viruses all the time. I think this sort of pandemic we’re experiencing now with coronavirus is going to happen again.Being on the front lines of it, it’s impossible not to see the only way of avoiding all of these issues that pop up with factory farming is to just stop buying the things they are producing. I want everyone to go vegan, and to stop eating animals and buying animal products. So much pain will be prevented.

Everything Changes When Faced With Death

Two and a half years ago I was in bed with a high fever, struggling to fall asleep. I oscillated between wrapping myself in blankets to stay warm through freezing shivers and uncovering completely, hoping the air would eradicate my hot sweats. Once I finally managed to drift off to sleep, I was awoken with what felt like a moving muscle spasm. It started in my right foot, the tendons tightened up my right leg, arm, hand, shoulder and into my jaw, then the spasm took control of my whole body, running down my left side and buckling my spine, arching to the point of breakage as my thoughts went into panic mode. Somehow I willed myself off the edge of the bed and lost consciousness before hitting the ground.The next day I found myself in urgent care looking at the results of a CAT scan showing an egg-sized tumor in my brain that had caused a grand mal seizure the night before. A cycle of life-altering events unfolded within the following weeks: an ambulance ride, an MRI, two days in the hospital on seizure watch, six-hour brain surgery in Boston and, eventually, a diagnosis of grade three brain cancer.I had a tumor that could be treated but my doctor said it would probably come back in three to five years. It would very likely kill me.The events of July of 2017 will forever be a turning point in my life. The following months were equally disruptive as I changed my behaviors, diet, health care routine and outlook on life. When I look back at that time, I realize it initiated my conscious dance with death. It quickly became clear that I—like all people—was going to die.It was my choice to live as fully as possible, while my body was still intact.I also awoke to a deeper sense of purpose as a human being. I became committed to love. Alua Arthur, the death doula who founded “Going With Grace,” once told me the two most common questions people ask when they die are: “Did I love?” and “Was I loved?” When I faced my diagnosis, it became crystal clear to me that love was the only thing that truly mattered.

Love Is an Outlook on Life

“Love” is a charged word; no two people approach it the same way. For many of us, love is riddled with trauma, challenging family histories and heartbreak. As someone who has identified love as my personal purpose, part of that work includes offering clear definitions anyone can use to engage with love in their daily lives.I’ve learned to view love through three lenses: self-love, interpersonal love and collective or universal love. My definition of love is informed by that of bell hooks (her lowercase style), who wrote All About Love. I define “love” as studying, listening for and accepting historic and present truths, for oneself, others and the planet—to inform genuine positive action that supports the future for oneself, others and the planet.

Understanding That Love Starts With Self-Love and Acceptance

When I got sick, I was forced to focus on self-love. I had to heal. Right now the world is sick, literally and metaphorically. This time of pandemic and social-isolation is driving us inwards: We’re forced to press pause on life and listen, review how we love ourselves and begin to act from that place for survival. We’re forced to confront our mortality and decide how we choose to engage and move forward. Will we love ourselves through this challenging time? In my view, the alternative is fatal.The four most important tools for self-love that I discovered when I was recovering from surgery, chemo and radiation follow below.

I had a tumor that could be treated but my doctor said it would probably come back in three to five years. It would very likely kill me.

Forgiveness

Asking for it from others I’d harmed and forgiving myself, there’s no time to hold grudges or bad blood for anyone, especially for yourself when death could be imminent.

Patience

Allowing things to happen at the pace they’re meant to and releasing control is a key part of healing. When we get frustrated and impatient—which will be inevitable at times—we delay our healing and increase stress and anxiety in the body. By accepting the reality of our circumstances, we allow ourselves to act realistically and with patience in a loving, compassionate way.

I view love through three lenses: self-love, interpersonal love and collective or universal love.

Boundaries

Once we understand our situation and accept where we are in relation to healing, it becomes abundantly clear where our energy doesn’t serve us and where it does. When it comes to self-love, any energy leaks or attention that isn’t in service to healing can slow our recovery or make us sicker. Setting boundaries and directing our attention effectively is a huge part of self-love. This may mean taking a break from negative news for a while, stepping away from toxic relationships or ensuring you’re consistently getting a full night’s sleep.

Purpose

Shortly after I finished my radiation treatment, I saw an energy healer in Los Angeles who told me to figure out what my perfect day was and live it once a week, then twice, then try to live my perfect day every day. This perfect day exercise led to a shift in my routine. I started listening for what scared me or excited me and allowed those emotions to guide my days, often simply going for walks or taking the train somewhere new.For one perfect day, I bought an old Honda sports car. The next day, I painted it in a crazy expressive style. Then, the day after, I picked up my friend, Dan, and we drove it from L.A. to Cabo and back over a nine-day New Years adventure to ring in 2018. After the trip, we put together an art show and sold paintings, photos and artifacts from the journey.Those perfect days led to others: Our gallery show led to my becoming a professional visual artist. I was hired by Soho House to design their upholstery fabric, opened my own art studio and started getting commissions to paint more vehicles, murals and other objects. Every day was becoming a perfect day. I realized I could share my personal purpose devoted to love as a visual artist.This perfect day metaphor can apply in simple gestures, too. Is it meditation? Being outside on a walk? Creating something from scratch? Cooking? Name those things and push yourself to incorporate them into your routine. It’s okay if your perfect day keeps changing, it should. Notice what drives you: What is the core value you want to feel and ultimately share with others?

Interpersonal Love Is a Shared Experience

I met Michelle at a dinner party early in the summer of 2018. We had a special connection. We were both living lives we loved and were passionate about our purposes as individuals. Because of this sense of security in our own identities, we were able to come together in partnership as two independent people bringing more love and purpose to each other’s life. This secure attachment allows us to continue to follow our personal goals, live with purpose and support each other while building a strong, committed partnership.When we are focused on our personal purpose, we are able to connect with others and build stronger relationships. Loving ourselves enables us to be better lovers of others.

Collective Love Gives Purpose to Individuals

A purposeful life quickly challenges us to give back. Purpose engages us to live for something greater than ourselves, the perfect day quickly becoming a platform for engaging with others. It may be creating art like what I often do, or it may be building a business, teaching, researching a topic to widen a field of knowledge, inventing something totally new or being engaged in civics. Whatever you discover as your purpose, it inevitably becomes a path to give back. That means when you’re loving yourself and you’re engaging with others from a place of passion and compassion about what you’re doing, there is usually a collective effect that expands outwards into the world.

Together, every day becomes a perfect day, for all people, when we commit to being Love Extremists.

To Be a Love Extremist, You Must Think Beyond Your Own Life Span

There’s a common phenomenon in certain spiritual and wellness circles where folks choose to focus on “love and light” instead of darkness and shadow. This is the concept of spiritual bypassing, disregarding the difficult stuff because it doesn’t contribute to a loving world. As a “Love Extremist,” I’ve learned that truth and love are synonymous even when the truth hurts or hides in the shadows.Sometimes in order to find what’s true, we must learn how to listen. Listening can be one of the most profound acts of a Love Extremist. When I was diagnosed with brain cancer, I needed to listen closely to the doctors and all those who could help me to face difficult truths. For me to heal, I had to accept my diagnosis and move forward with the awareness of possible solutions (and the patience to let them work and support my ultimate healing). I went to a psychotherapist, saw healers, changed my diet and began exploring alternative therapies. I could face my disease honestly and take steps to address it.Being a Love Extremist has challenged me to go a step beyond the first instinct of collective love, which is often selective and isolated to chosen families of similar economic, racial, religious and cultural backgrounds. I’ve learned that in order for our planet to heal, we must listen for and face difficult and painful truths. When we listen closely, we can see we face environmental catastrophe driven by our economic, political and cultural institutions which also promote systemic oppression towards people of color, LGBTQIA+, Jews, Muslims, those who are disabled, poor folks, women, transgender and indigenous peoples—among others.We aren’t taking care of each other or our home.These difficult truths are the ones that kill us and our neighbors every day. When police target people of color at an alarming rate due to systemic racist policing policies, death is often a result. When indigenous people’s land becomes valuable to business interests, entire cultures and communities are destroyed. When a virus begins taking hundreds of thousands of lives, it’s not just about oppression and pain, it’s about life and death—especially for those most vulnerable without the resources needed to survive.Our planetary health is on the brink: As a human species, we are being tested but we have a choice. We can choose to ignore those who don’t look like us. Or we can choose to show up in a new way, as Love Extremists.Will you wake up with me? Will you start listening to what is truly needed from within and around you? Will you act with love for all your fellow humans? Will you take steps towards healing our suffering planet with all your purpose and all your gifts?Together, every day becomes a perfect day, for all people, when we commit to being Love Extremists.

When I first heard the term, “opioid crisis,” I said to myself: “We already had one of those.” It’s good that people are noticing it now, but it’s been around for a while.The moment the heroin kicked in I was like, “Oh, I want this for the rest of my life. Every day.” It was instant: This is great. I love this. I'm gonna do this forever.It’s the same story. First, it was pills and then, eventually, everybody said: “It's cheaper, easier, more cost-effective and efficient to just get heroin.”

Where I Come From, Drug Abuse Is the Norm

I grew up in a Minnesota college town. It was ground zero of a big heroin epidemic—the biggest in the state's history. There was even a big FBI raid.It wasn't heroin that everybody started doing: It was opioids, pills. The big one in town was Roxicet. It has the same drug as Oxycontin: Oxycodone. It's what's in Percocet. It's widely used; it goes to a lot of cancer patients. And that's where we were getting it. The drug dealers had a connection with cancer.When I first did that I was 15. I was a smart kid; good at school. I didn't just fall stupidly into drugs. I knew what they were. It wasn't a big surprise to get hooked on drugs. I knew that's what happens when you do them.I was, at this point, just snorting it. My parents didn’t know. Then, we moved to the Twin Cities. So, I got my driver's license and I would drive back to my old town every weekend to go get high.I didn't really become a junkie until I went to college in Milwaukee.

It was instant: This is great. I love this.

Your Addiction Is Probably Going to Kill You

I went to an art school that was admissions-based and did really well. The drugs weren't destroying my life then. They did later. It was Trainspotting later. That's the thing: You can do it and get away with it. Some people can do it for a long time. That’s crazy to me. There are people who are heroin addicts for their whole lives. Those people beat the odds because they don't die. That's the thing with heroin: You're gonna die. The odds are not in your favor.You get a tolerance for it and you have to do more. At a certain point, your heart rate can't go any lower, even though your tolerance for getting high is really large. You have to do more and more but, then, every single time you do it you're basically playing Russian roulette. You gotta do enough to get high and you’re fucking sick if you don't do it. And that’s a nasty sick.One thing I do want to get across is just how deadly it is. It kills a lot of people. Anybody that you know who was a junkie definitely knows some people who have died.I have a bunch of dead friends. Another one died earlier this year who was clean for a long time. I think it's over ten friends of mine that are dead from using. Just from that. That makes it different than booze or weed. Booze kills you slowly but this one: Every time you use it, you're playing Russian roulette.And if you, reader, did that same shot as I was doing, you’d probably die or you have to go to a hospital. All of these people are doing it as many times a day as they can. So not only are they playing Russian roulette, they’re playing it as much as possible.

It wasn't a big surprise to get hooked on drugs.

No, You Can’t Be a Functioning Heroin Addict

My full-on years were from when I was 19 to 21. Those two years I was a junkie.How did I get drugs in Milwaukee? I found somebody on the street. And spiraled from there: started using needles. That's a significant graduation in a junkie’s career—it's over.There’s something that differentiates junkies from someone who may have an alcohol problem: Every junkie knows what they are. They’ll try to hide it, but they won't try to fool you. You're addicted to heroin: You fucking stick a needle in your arm tons of times a day. Nobody's like, “I'm just a casual heroin user. I just do it socially.” Those people who say they only smoke cigarettes when they're drinking: Nobody's like that with heroin.There are two different parts of getting high on heroin. One, everybody calls “the rush” and that's right when you shoot up—right when you push it into your blood. Your heart feels like it stops, but that feels really good. You love that feeling. Everything feels just super intense for ten seconds. That's why everybody does heroin: for those ten seconds. Then you stay high for like an hour and you get a little less high, and stay a little high for a couple more hours after that.Ideally, if you're a junkie, you're trying to stay high all day long. You don't want to get sober because that's not very pleasant. The next day when you wake up and it's out of your system, you get really sick. You are super cold yet super sweaty—it feels like a fever.I still would go to class. I had the bad habit of shooting up wherever I happened to be, so I'd go into the bathroom in school or in a coffee shop or at a bar—I didn't like drinking back then because it fucks up your high. It ruins it.I thought of myself as a well-functioning person until the end. I wasn't, at all. It mostly came down to money. It's a really expensive habit to keep, so you can’t afford it unless you're rich. I think that would be a bad thing to be rich if you're an addict because then you're gonna die. I always joked about the best way to kill a heroin addict would be to give them $1,000. That would be a sure-fire way to do ‘em in.When I was doing it and, keep in mind this is like 2007—a gram is a lot, that's enough to kill you. Well, most people. It was usually sold in tenths: and that was ten or 20 bucks. They were always in tinfoil in Milwaukee, at least. In Minneapolis, it wasn't. It was in a little paper bindle, like origami. Regional methods of delivery, I suppose.For 200 bucks you could get a gram. (In some places that’s really high, in some places that's really low.) At the height of my using, I would need at least four-tenths to get high, up from one-tenth at the beginning. For one shot. That's on that dangerous edge: If it's really pure, it could do you in.The snowy cold reminds me of heroin because when you do it, you feel super warm—you can't feel cold. It's a pain killer. You don’t poop. You're totally constipated. One time my roommate and I—he was a junkie too—the two of us didn’t shit for ten days straight. Then, we both had to go on the same day and we broke our toilet. It broke the fucking toilet. We had to call a plumber and when he came he said, “What the fuck did you do this?”

You're gonna die.

Treatment Must Improve

I had one experience that should’ve been rock bottom but wasn’t. I overdosed. I was alone—I had a roommate, thank God—but I was by myself in my room. It was a “normal” dose but that day it wasn’t: the batch was purer. I overdosed by myself in my bed and then my roommate heard me trying to breathe. He told me he thought I was crying so he came into my room to see what I was crying about.But, I was in the midst of dying.The paramedics said I actually died for a minute. My heart stopped beating and I stopped breathing. And they brought me back to life with chest compressions. My sternum got broken. It hurt to walk upstairs.They inject you with Narcan. They should have it everywhere. It should be like an EpiPen. It’s an anti-opiate; when you put it in your system, it immediately stops what the opiates are doing and blocks them. But it also shoots you into instant withdrawals: the worst withdrawals you can imagine.When I woke up in the ambulance, I didn't know what was going on. It was the middle of winter in Milwaukee: cold as shit, and I was in only my underwear. I was freezing and in the most extreme pain in my life. They got me to the hospital and I was telling the doctor, “I think something's wrong. I think I'm gonna die.” You feel like you can't breathe.They must have seen other kids come in with heroin overdoses because the nurse and the doctor were both pissed at me. They were like, “Fuck you for wasting our time on something so stupid.” They were lecturing me: “You're an idiot. Only idiots do drugs and overdose.” I get it. But it was bad timing. They were judgmental and, granted, they had a reason to be. But, I won't forget that when I told him, “I think I'm dying, I can't breathe,” he just looked at me with scorn and was like, “You're fine.”I didn't quit after I overdosed. That didn't do it. I wish that that had been my deciding moment. I came back and I just got really, really into it the second time. I went even harder then. That's when I started paying less attention to outside things like school and I lost all of my friends. I didn't drop out but I didn't show up most of the time.

I have a bunch of dead friends.

Thoughts on How to Stem the Opioid Crisis

I have no idea how it’s possible to solve this crisis. It's out of control.Clean needles are a great start. My city had a needle van. And that probably saved my life. I used a clean needle every time. Because of that van, I don't have any diseases.Suboxone is a miracle drug that was regulated at first and illegal for a while. When I got clean, Suboxone had recently come over to the States and accepted as a way to treat physical addiction.What's great about it is that the opiate gets rid of your physical withdrawal symptoms—so the severe fever-like symptoms. If you can just get yourself to put that nasty orange pill under your tongue—it tastes like oranges but disgusting oranges. It's like if you took an orange Tums and then crushed up an aspirin and mixed it all together. You put that under your tongue and let it dissolve. If you can just get yourself to do that in the morning, then you're good for that day. You can't use. Even if you try, it's not gonna work. It'll be a big waste. So having that actual medical boundary between you and getting high is huge—the mental effect of that is really helpful.It's all for your head. With addiction, you gotta take anything any resource you can get—whatever gets you through the day.At that point, there were laws that there could only be so many Suboxone doctors operating in a certain area, and they could only treat X amount of patients. That's crazy. We have a bunch of people who need it. My doctor was just as pissed off about it as I was. It was actually fun listening to him bitch about the bureaucracy—just how dumb our medical system can be sometimes.Methadone is not the best alternative because it's just another opiate. I used it as a street drug. In my small town in Minnesota, my best friend's brother died from Methadone.It would be like if they treated alcoholics who used to drink a lot of vodka by giving them hard seltzers from the grocery store—but just as many of those as they could handle. That’s exactly how it seems to me: You're just trading heroin for another opiate. I guess the good thing is that it's more regulated because it's made in a facility.If they made heroin in a regulated facility, that'd probably save a bunch of lives. But, I don't know how you could convince anybody to start selling legal, medical heroin.I had good luck. I didn’t have to go to prison, thank God. I hate to say it but I was also a white college student. I don't think I would have the same luck if I were black or brown and not going to school on the east side of town. That's just the way it is.

Illegal Activities for the Illegal Drugs

To support the super crippling financial habit, I had to steal a bunch of stuff. I had a part-time job, so every penny of that went to heroin. I never thought of my drug money as being in the pool of money that I had to my name. If you handed me 20 bucks and said, “Hey here's a gift for you,” I would be like, “Cool that's not $20 in my pool of money that buys me clothes and food and shit. That is in the heroin pool.” And all of the money goes into that pool.I was into music when I was a teenager and I had a bunch of nice guitars. I sold those right away. Once I didn’t have any guitars or amplifiers left to sell, I got involved in some sketchy shit that my junkie friends were doing like stealing bikes and reselling them. Or stealing hard drives from big box stores and then selling them on Craigslist. That type of shit. All the time.

I had the bad habit of shooting up wherever I happened to be.

My Rock Bottom Was Worse Than Overdosing

My rock bottom was when I tried to kill myself. That was super dark. I failed at it. I woke up the next day and checked myself into rehab. I went to the college counselor because I didn’t know where else to go and I dumped everything on her. And she was like, “Fuck me.” She gave me an answer that was basically like, “I have no way to handle you and your situation right now.” But she had some pamphlets and she knew of a rehab place. She got me their number. I feel so bad for that lady.That rehab facility was great. It was an intensive outpatient. I did that for a couple of weeks, then saw somebody there twice a week for a couple of months. Then they hooked me up with a Suboxone doctor and a psychiatrist.I had a relapse a year later for about a week. And, since then, I haven't used—so nine years clean of heroin.

I overdosed by myself in my bed.

The Stigma Makes It Even Harder to Help

There's a stigma about heroin users. Because they're seen as bad people, society doesn’t want to help. This is oversimplifying it but think it's similar to how we deal with homeless people. There's a stigma around them, so it makes you less inclined to want to sit down and think about how to fix the problem. A lot of people see the junkies as just scumbags and criminals. If they just didn't break the law, they wouldn’t be in this mess, right?A lot more people knew more about me than I thought knew about me. One time, I was at a bar and saw a fellow student of mine who I knew. She came up to me in a bar and I was all ragged and strung out and super skinny back then because I didn't eat.She came up to me and she pulled me over and sat me down and was like, “Hey, I know what's up. I know you're strung out and you look like shit. You used to be cool and I'm worried about you.” Has anybody ever said that to you? It was very cinematic and I was floored by it. She had no agenda. She just straight up felt bad about me and could tell that I was a junkie. I thought I was doing so well hiding it. That really made a huge impression on me.And then I went into the bathroom and shot up. “Welp, back to work.”

It’s been ten months since my daughter arrived. Ten months. Yet I am still unable to accept my new life as a parent. There’s no dramatic accidental-unwanted-surprise pregnancy story here, I willingly chose to start trying with my partner, I made up my own mind and it was all planned. Yet still I am unable to accept this new life. It has been so monumentally difficult to accept that my mental health has suffered immensely. I have a history of anxiety and depression, so it might’ve been in the cards—but I never expected to end up in such a hole for so long, without being able to pull myself out of it.Why can’t I accept it? I’ve reflected on this a lot. I’ve dug deep, there were times when all I could think about was: “Why?” Why has it been so impossible for me to ease into the groove and enjoy being a dad? Why does everything feel like a chore? Why am I grumpy, moody, passive-aggressive, withdrawn and all the variations of simmering, suppressed anger you can imagine?If you think about something too hard you never get the answer, so it came to me when I least expected it. Like a tragic eureka moment, the lightbulb went off and the realization hit me: Deep down I never wanted this. It was an utterly shame-filled epiphany. I felt immediately disgusted with myself. I felt idiotic, immature, selfish. So many self-descriptive slurs came bubbling up and spilling out of my subconscious. How could I have done this? Is this just an extreme reaction to an intensely difficult and overwhelming life transition? I sat with it. Deep down I never wanted this. Was that my truth?

Deep down I never wanted this.

Newborn Dad Depression Is Normal; This Is Not

By this point, I’d been going through repeated cycles of depression, anger, feelings of hopelessness, exhaustion, mental and physical fatigue and every month or so I’d have a meltdown. Our baby arrived in June. By Christmas, I’d referred myself to the therapy services run by my local council. I was way down deep in the blackest of holes and the only way out, it seemed, was to be able to talk to a professional.I was only given six sessions. It’s not a lot but if you can allow yourself to open up you can make decent progress. In the first session I was afraid, but by the second appointment, the words came out of my mouth, “I wonder if I even really wanted to be a parent?” Before my therapist could reply, I quickly added, “But it’s too late now, I know.”I still wondered if I was just my panicked mind trying to find a reason for my extreme reaction to this beautiful little newborn baby entering my life. But the truth was there. I knew it was true because every time I thought about it, it made total sense. It felt right. If I think about those words, “I never wanted this,” there’s an inner calm that emanates from my gut.

I Genuinely Feel Like My Baby Has Ruined My Life

There was a time when having a child felt like the dream. Four years into a long-term relationship, the decision was made. My partner had always been clear about her ambitions to have a family. I’d already been a father figure to my nephew. From the age of one, I’d been there for him, since his dad wasn’t around. I’d never had a dad either, so I wanted to make sure he didn’t go through what I did.My liberty is one of the most important things in my life. While my partner dreamed of having a family, my dreams were less concrete and centered around peace, comfort, freedom, relaxation. I imagined a life where I could meditate every day, avoid overworking, come and go as I please, travel, enjoy life to the fullest. I was already doing that to a degree, but I was working toward a time where I could really settle into a wholesome, nourishing lifestyle that allowed me to be as solitary as need be. As an introvert, my lifeblood is alone time: time to reflect, process, generate ideas, read, write, draw, paint, meditate.When did I change my mind? My partner started to go crazy. Driven by a deep biological need to start our family—but also by a deep psychological trauma relating to financial security—she became a workaholic. Desperate to reach a certain financial status before she could begin to think about her dream, she lost herself in work. In the end, she had a breakdown.I knew what we had to do.

There was a time when having a child felt like the dream.

Admitting I Shouldn’t Have Had a Baby Is Not Easy

Men are trained from a very young age to bury their feelings. We are experts at it. So that’s what I did. I buried my desire for a quiet life to make her dream a reality. By the time we found out we were pregnant, I was so convinced it was my dream too that I was overjoyed. The pregnancy was a happy nine months. When she arrived though, a few tiny hairline cracks appeared in my jubilant facade. We came home exhausted after an 18-hour labor, slept for 15 minutes and awoke to the door buzzing. The first arrival was downstairs. Within half an hour, we were trying to entertain three family members, barely able to think straight as they fired questions at us, posed with the baby and expected us to feed them.A few weeks later, I was back at work, but I work from home. This space I’d occupied as my own was now taken up by all of us. This place now became a prison of sorts, where I couldn’t escape my parental responsibilities. The noise, the claustrophobia, the lack of sleep, the lack of space, time, energy. An introvert’s nightmare. My nightmare. My partner’s dream.So I descended into depression and total disharmony. Every parent goes through it. I’m not a special case. It’s one of the most unsettling transitions anyone can go through. Most parents get through it because they learn to accept it, because it’s what they wanted. But my baseline is a deep aversion: Everything is a chore. Every difficult situation amplified by my need to escape. This is not the life I wanted. In my darkest moments, I’ve wished for death to come and whisk me away, a cowardly wish because I could never end it myself.I have some coping mechanisms: exercise, going out for walks and so on. I have processed some of the early trauma, too. But I will never be able to escape this life. My dad left me when I was a few weeks old. I can’t let that happen to my daughter. I give her my all because she deserves it. She’d never know I don’t want to be doing this. It’s not her fault. So, my work now is acceptance. It’s all I can do: deal with it.Being honest with yourself is the first step towards self-healing. I know what the problem is and I’m working toward coping. I hope these words resonate with others who feel similarly. When I searched online and there were very few articles on this subject. It’s taboo. Acknowledging that you’ve made a life-changing choice that you regret is not easy. People will think I’m ungrateful, despicable. How do you tell people? You don’t. You keep it to yourself.Hopefully others that share my experience will read this and find some solace. You’re not alone.

Being in quarantine is tough. Being in quarantine with an eating disorder is tougher. I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa in 2012, during my sophomore year of college. In other words, I was severely underweight. I never thought I had a problem. I knew I thought about food a lot, but I chalked it up to being health conscious. It was a close friend of mine who initially, during our first year in college, sat me down and expressed her concerns—concerns she was apparently not alone in having. She noticed my diet, how little food I was eating. She told me others who were close to me were worried about my rapid weight loss, and wanted me to seek help. I shrugged it off and told her I was fine. I never skipped meals—I just monitored what I ate. If anything, she should be worried about our friends who can’t stop eating, I shot back. Pizza for every meal isn’t healthy either.About a month later, my friend told me she scheduled me a therapy session with a counselor at the student health center. I kicked and screamed the whole way there, but I went. The counselor was clearly not a specialist in disordered eating. He gave me generic, unhelpful advice. “When you’re eating, think about other things.”Groundbreaking, like telling a depressed person to not be sad.I refused to return for another session. I only went to appease my friends anyway. I was fine. I never skipped meals. I didn’t see why everyone was so upset. But I would.

Anorexia Recovery Is a Lifelong Journey

After freshman year, my friends started joining clubs and making new friends. I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere at the school. I was often alone, thinking about food every minute I was awake. I was miserable. When I went home for fall break sophomore year, my parents were shocked to see how much weight I had lost. My mom immediately took me to the doctor, where we discovered I was nearly 100 pounds. At 5’6”, I was severely underweight.It tore my family apart. My parents were forbidding me to return to school if I didn’t agree to get help. At the end of the school year, I decided to transfer. I felt like staying in my current environment would only make things worse. I needed a change. After I arrived at my new university in 2013, things seemed to get better. I joined a sorority and was working at my school’s TV station. I had other things to occupy my mind besides what I was going to eat that day.In December 2015, I graduated from college and moved to Chicago. My mental health was on a steady incline. I couldn’t have been happier. In 2017, I was convinced I was free from my eating disorder altogether. I was around 140 pounds and eating freely: whatever and whenever I wanted. I was enjoying myself, but I realized I was eating the way I had mocked my college friends for during freshman year. I decided to lose some weight. This time, the healthy way. I changed my diet from pizza to vegetables, and started working out five to six times a week. I was in the best shape of my life, but I still got to enjoy my favorite foods from time to time. I stopped restricting myself. Then one day, I relapsed. I don’t know why, but looking in the mirror brought me to tears, and I needed to do something. I learned that an eating disorder never really goes away. It’ll pop its head in every now and then to remind you how fat you are, how ugly, how unlovable.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Has Made My Relationship With Food Worse

Since being in quarantine, it’s been difficult to focus on things other than food and my weight. As with most mental illnesses, some days are better than others. The highs are high, and the lows are extremely low. I’ve thrown out so much food during panic attacks. I’ll raid my cabinets and get rid of food so I won’t be tempted to eat it later. Of course, I feel guilty. I’m throwing out food when there are so many who can’t afford to eat, but an eating disorder doesn’t care about other people. It doesn’t even care about you. My eating disorder manifests itself in places I wouldn’t have imagined. For example, I don’t watch TV shows anymore. I watch YouTube videos of people eating foods I wish I could eat. I know I don’t have the mental and emotional freedom to stray from what I’m comfortable with putting in my body.I wonder what it’s like to wake up and not think about food, or plan what you’re going to eat that day, and when. I wonder what it’s like to go out to dinner with friends and not obsessively research the menu beforehand, or not even go because you can't find something on the menu that’s “safe.” I wonder what it’s like to have a bite of your favorite dessert and not secretly spit it out. I wonder what it’s like to not take laxatives because going to the bathroom makes you feel skinny.I wonder what it’s like to just have a healthy relationship with food. I don’t think I’ll ever stop wondering. I’ve considered seeking treatment, but the thought of getting better terrifies me. To me, “getting better” means “getting fat.” It means losing a battle with myself. I try to picture myself years from now and where my mental health will be. It’s difficult to imagine myself in a place where I’m not afraid of food, after so many years living in fear. But I look forward to the day I can say that I am.

I recently had the hardest breakup and the worst heartbreak of my life. And, when I looked for some semblance of consolation, I couldn't find any music or movies or books that reflected my pain back to me. The consensus around heartbreak tends to be: Damn, this sucks but at least now it feels like all the music ever written was written for and about me—right now in this exact moment. But not this time. I had a hard time expressing how much pain I was in; there was no cultural language for it. This particular breakup was with my best friend.Even though the pain of losing a friend—and losing the part of yourself that you grew used to having reflected back through that friend—is something we all go through, we have no significant recognition of that loss culturally. Why is that? Why do we universally understand romantic heartbreak to be akin to an actual physical wound, but the heartbreak that comes with platonic loss is swept under the rug, almost entirely disregarded? I don't propose I have the answers to these questions, I just feel I am not the only one who is wondering them.

This particular breakup was with my best friend.

We Were Lifelong Friends—or So We Thought

My best friend Ed and I met in 2016 when I was twenty and had just moved to New York. We were both aspiring comedians with stars in our eyes. We instantly had a connection, one we both initially confused for romance. After a brief attempt at dating and realizing “oh, nope, absolutely not,” we decided, simultaneously, that what we had was special but it was 100 percent platonic. We became inseparable.He became like another limb to me. We were there for each other for our successes, our failures, our fair share of crushes, loves and heartbreaks. We became close to each other's families, each other's friends, and each other's significant others. We saw the absolute best and absolute worst sides of each other, and we were on board for all of it. Consistently, one thing always remained true to us both: We'll have each other's backs no matter what.

We became inseparable.

What Getting Over Our Loss of Friendship Has Made Me Realize

In the time I've taken since our falling out a couple of months ago—”pre-quar,” I’ve been calling it—I've realized that this is something many people in their twenties do. In the space between our childhoods and the families we may build later on, we invest heavily in friendships and find newer, more adult versions of basically carving "best friends forever" into a tree. Ed was my bestie, but because we were adults now, we found different ways of expressing that to each other. Children believe in abstracts like "forever," adults believe in commitments.Ed and I made a lot of commitments to each other. Professionally and personally, there was a lot carved into our tree. We clung on to our shared entity of us. Our actions and our words made our platonic partnership a collective focus. We shared custody of a whole life we had planned. And, no, we were not in love with each other. Not romantically, anyway. That’s always the next question. Believe me, we both knew being in love would be incredibly convenient. Maybe breaking up would have been easier. At least there would be songs about it.I know that it’s not uncommon for friends to make grandiose plans and promises: It feels right and makes clear sense to you in the moment. You know deep down, though, that when you come up for air, you won’t see many folks further along in life sticking to those plans. There are far fewer 45-year-old best friends living next door to each other, sharing a swimming pool and a dog rescue sanctuary than there are 20- and 30-year-olds promising that to one another.I’m not saying that was our specific plan. I am saying if anyone wants to make that plan with me, there is a recent vacancy. Bonus points if you want to also be my comedy writing partner and you’ll dogsit my dog whenever I leave town. (Oh, shit, I just realized how much my dog is gonna miss Ed, too.)

There’s No Pop Culture Cure for Breaking Up With a Best Friend

In my endless search to find any piece of media that shows the true anatomy of a friendship breakup, the closest I've found is Frances Ha. In that film, the main character and her best friend prioritize the comfort of the bubble that their friendship has given them. Most of their future plans are with that bubble in mind—until suddenly they're not. That space, the space between BFF and stranger, that's an utterly lonely space. It’s made lonelier by the fact that the very person who would normally console you during heartache is the one that it's about this time. They are the one you can’t go to anymore, for this or anything else.Most every other movie uses a friendship fallout as its “all is lost” script device, a catalyst that propels the main character into achieving personal growth needed in order to solve the original conflict of the film. In the end, the problem is solved and, seamlessly, the friendship is mended. I like that story. We all do. It wouldn’t be the format of just about every single movie ever written if it wasn’t a good story. But it also isn’t always what happens.

I’m not saying that was our specific plan. I am saying if anyone wants to make that plan with me, there is a recent vacancy.

Falling Out With Your Best Friend Does Have a Silver Lining

I’m not saying I haven’t been propelled into some serious personal growth. I certainly have. When an invariable suddenly becomes a variable in your life, you tend to take some inventory and make some changes. I like the person this experience has made and continues to form: I am more present in my other relationships, I am more sure of who I am as an individual. I am still a person who just checked a thesaurus for the word “growth,” so I don’t use it too much in one paragraph, but, hey, that’s the word. I’ve certainly grown. What the movies don’t tell you is that growth in and of itself doesn't bring your friendship back. Ed is growing, too. But we’re growing in different directions.Maybe Ed and I will be invited to each other's weddings; maybe we'll exchange Christmas photos one day; maybe we will see each other at a mutual friend's birthday party and exchange pleasantries. But the demotion from BFF to acquaintance—the demotion from limb to driftwood—is a heartbreak that there are simply not enough songs about. Not enough movies show that, sometimes, you aren't friends again in the end. Sometimes you're just two people, with a whole shared language, catching up at a party years later in plain English.

Some odd years ago, I was born and, then, immigrated to the United States with my family. I went to public grade schools. I grew up with a mom, a dad and a sibling. I lived in a house that had a tree in the front yard. I rode bikes. I took piano lessons. I went trick-or-treating for Halloween. On October 31, 2010, I went trick-or-treating for the last time. It wasn’t because I grew up and became too old. It was because I grew up and told my parents I am gay.“It Gets Better” was a campaign that was running all over the internet back then. Neil Patrick Harris was the main face of that movement. He told young LGBTQ+ people that the struggles they were dealing with were only temporary—that “It Gets Better.” He in his fancy suit, on TV, telling me that in three, six, ten years: It gets better. I looked at him first with envy, thinking how lucky he was to be able to live his life without fear, without prejudice. He and his fancy suit, perfect haircut, white smile, and eyes that looked like they had never expressed sadness. I sat in my worn-down pajamas, with an awkward body that I was still growing into, just trying to think about what life would be like without prejudice.

We would rather have a straight and homeless son, than a gay and successful one.

My Parents Didn't Accept That I’m Gay; They’d Rather I Be Homeless

“We would rather have a straight and homeless son, than a gay and successful one.” These 15 words were uttered to me on October 31, 2010, and are forever etched into my mind, physically branded into my skin as a reminder, and repeated on every day I go on.I think maybe Neil forgot to include “sometimes never” in his commentary. Sometimes it might never get better. Sometimes it might take a lifetime. Sometimes. Never. Just never. Of course, time is relative, 2010 was ten years ago. But it seems like yesterday. I’m reminded of it every time I take my shirt off. I walked on eggshells for what seemed like forever. Unsure of what tomorrow will bring. Maybe suicide?

I had two choices: Either continue to feel down, or to keep my head up and pull myself up.

Heartbreak and Sadness Led to Acceptance

In the fall of 2013, I was ready to rebrand myself. I received a couple of college scholarships, but there was a gap that I had to fill. My family is notorious for being competitive, especially among family members. I could not be the one person—the eldest child out of all my immediate cousins—to not go to school, or culturally worse, go to a community college. I had to take out student loans. I had no choice. It was shame.Then, I fell in love for the very first time. I was very happy. What is love? I am of the opinion that people in the LGBTQ+ community are five to ten years behind our heterosexual counterparts when it comes to love: simply because we did not have the same opportunities. Then I fell out of love—mostly due to struggling with figuring out who I am, what my identity is.“We would rather have a straight and homeless son, than a gay and successful one.” Success is a finicky thing. It’s different for different people, what a cliché thing to write. Neil Patrick Harris was wrong. It doesn’t get better. Why me?I had two choices: Either continue to feel down, or to keep my head up and pull myself up. Whatever happened to rebranding myself? I focused on my goals, my dreams, my hopes, my livelihood.

Ten years after coming out of the closet as gay, Neil Patrick Harris was right. It got better.

How My Coming Out Story Went From Heartbreak to Happiness

Ten years after coming out of the closet as gay, Neil Patrick Harris was right. It got better. Much better. As I am writing this, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, I am sitting on a Zoom call with a slew of friends I've made throughout the years. I am still learning more about who I am. Originally I thought it got better in 2013 when I went to college. Then I thought it got better in 2016 when I fell in love. Now it’s even better in 2020. It will always get better, this isn’t the end: If it is, then I’ve lived a very sad life. My relationship with my parents has gotten better. I need to apologize to Neil Patrick Harris for hating him so many years ago. I’m sorry. My life isn’t perfect, but it’s loads better than before. It definitely got better. Why? Because of me.

When I first got into online sex work years ago, I started slowly—the occasional cam show with my boyfriend, a smattering of sexy pics posted to Twitter. We had a few regular customers who made us feel welcome and would hang out with us in our cam room, but we were new and our exposure was still relatively limited. At the time, it was more like an experiment—to find out what sex work was like and if there was a place for me in it—and less like a job. The fact that we made so little money doing it probably contributed to that feeling: Though, of course, we always got on camera hoping to make the cash that we desperately needed.I remember talking to a friend—a veteran in the field—who argued that the sort of dabbling we were doing was foolish. Unless we were actually going to commit to putting in the time it takes to make a real living, she said, the inevitable exposure and stigma that comes with getting naked on the internet just aren't worth it.I’m on the phone on my knees on the side of the bed fucking myself with a dildo, per his request. He is on the phone listening, telling me when to go faster and harder. Then with an anger that I don’t expect he says, “Fuck yourself like the whore that you are.”

The sex work career that I have built has been more fraught than I could have imagined when I first started.

During the Coronavirus, Sex Work Is Everyone’s Quick Fix

At the time, I wasn’t ready to hear what my experienced friend had to say, but, now, her voice pops into my head every time I open my DMs. There, I find messages from civilian friends or acquaintances, asking for my advice on how to get into online sex work (amateur porn, phone sex, sexting, camming, selling panties or nudes and so on). Since the beginning of COVID-19, these messages have been flooding in from people who have lost their jobs and are looking for “quick” and “easy” ways to make ends meet while sheltering-in-place.My knee-jerk response to this question is always to tell them not to do it. But when I step back from my annoyance at the constant requests that I provide free consulting services, I have to admit that the real answer is much more complex. The sex work career that I have built—which has moved far beyond those initial encounters in cam rooms into my main source of income, my community and a significant part of my identity—has been more fraught than I could have imagined when I first started.He calls me to tell me he has just gotten married; it’s been six months since the last time we spoke. The first time he called me, years ago, he spoke of his wife who died a decade earlier, how he can’t get over her. We would quite often roleplay intimacy, he would tell me he loved me while he was orgasming. I let him say it, I knew it was necessary for him. But this time, I know we won’t talk again. Sometimes I lose them to love.

Sex Work Isn’t Like Other Jobs: It’s a Lifestyle

When I began, I didn’t know that my work in the adult industry would shape most of my interactions, change people’s perception of me and cause major strife in my relationships with my extended family. I also didn’t know that the work itself would be so intense, creative, raw and emotional, and that I would have a hard time imagining going back to a “normal” job.I didn’t know, in other words, that it would restructure my entire world.When we first start talking, he buys all of my content: my solo videos, my girl/girl videos and the ones I make with my partner. He tells me how sexy they are and about how he masturbates to them when he misses me. But now he tells me he won’t buy or watch my videos anymore: Now that we’re close, they make him jealous.It turns out my friend was right: Sex work isn’t something you just dabble in, it is a job that will change you, one that you can’t just do to make ends meet during a pandemic, and then pack away in a box and forget about when the economy rebounds.In the sex industry, we often market our success in a way that obscures how much labor we do to create it; and journalists, who have an endless appetite for sex work stories, typically only have access to the most successful models—those who already have large platforms. They continue to report on the realities of online sex work through the lens of the prosperous, who have a vested interest projecting an image of success. Working in the industry teaches you that clients will pay a premium if they believe you are popular and your time is limited. The reporting the public gets about online sex work, in other words, tends to focus on outliers—it paints an incomplete picture.I answer the phone and it’s a new voice, someone I haven’t spoken to before. He tells me that he wants to do a role play, but when he describes the character I will play I realize it is me. He has studied me and my interests and has drawn my character with a frightening degree of specificity. I try to ignore this as I move into the fantasy. That is, until he makes it clear that my character will be murdered.

After he watches it, he tells us that this is the first time he has ever cried while masturbating.

How to Become an Online Sex Worker, for Real

I am able to live off my sex work income during the pandemic because I have spent years building a brand, a platform and a client base. I have become one of the outliers. What started off as a side hustle that wasn’t lucrative enough to pay the bills, has become the income that supports my writing and other creative projects. Sure, a few people who have the right combination of traits (and lots of luck) are catapulted into quick success, but for most of us, getting to this point is a long, labor-intensive and, sometimes, painful process.It is hardly something that can be used as a quick fix for a deep economic crisis.He reveals that he has been fantasizing about men, and that these thoughts make him uncomfortable. He knows I have a male partner, and asks if we can create a MMF bisexual fantasy for him—giving him permission to feel his desires. We make a custom video inviting him into our dynamic, telling him we both want him. I encourage him to kiss my lover, to fuck him, to cuddle him. After he watches it, he tells us that this is the first time he has ever cried while masturbating.To get into sex work now, during a global pandemic, means stepping into an already oversaturated market crowded by long-time performers and models, in-person sex workers pivoting their business online and newcomers who dive in head-first, with every intention of making it a long-term career. While stay-at-home orders have exaggerated loneliness, driving some new potential clients to the sites where we work (Chaturbate, ManyVids, PornHub Premium, OnlyFans, NiteFlirt, to name a few), this hasn’t been a jackpot for performers. Clients old and new are dealing with their own economic anxieties, lack of privacy while quarantining with wives and kids, and an excess of options for sexual gratification—many of which are free.We are talking on one of my sexting platforms when he tells me to check my Twitter DMs. I go there to see a message from him saying that while he likes talking to me, he's already blown his budget on other models, and was wondering if we can just chat on Twitter (for free).

Being a Sex Worker Takes a Toll on Your Emotional Health

Even if online sex work were a sure path to financial security, no one gets there by randomly dropping sexy selfies—or even hardcore scenes. The work of sex work consists of constant fan interaction, social media savvy and promotion, all leading to a degree of exposure that makes it likely that your mother, your boss and your best friend will at some point encounter images of you having sex.I learned this the hard way when my mom saw a pirated picture of me on PornHub, and when my partner’s uncle told his entire extended family that he saw me giving a blowjob on Facebook. (The Facebook part obviously isn’t true, but I guess this partial lie was less embarrassing for him than admitting he actually found out about my work on a porn site.) This same exposure that makes you an object of concern (at best) and repudiation (at worst) for family and community will also open you up to trolls that pick apart your body, your life and your career choices. It will mean constantly having to defend and protect yourself from the threat of piracy, doxing, judgment and violence.Moreover, it will require a high degree of involvement with clients: negotiating complicated transactional relationships, payment structures, intimate connections, jealous attachments and conflict. It is sitting with clients as they mourn their dead wives, express deep-seated shame about their desires or project their misogyny onto you. It is learning to weed out time-wasters, cut off big spenders when the relationship becomes toxic and learning to really listen so that you know how to best meet your client’s needs. He messages me and tells me it’s been a long day and all he wants to do is cry. When I ask him why he tells me that his child’s friend committed suicide and that, because of social distancing, no one is allowed to get out of their cars at the funeral; no one can hug the parents as they stand by the graveside of the child they are burying. I let him tell the story of his child’s friend.

What we have also learned through this pandemic is that our work is essential.

COVID-19 Has Proven Sex Work Is an Essential Business

One of the things that have been interesting during the COVID-19 pandemic is to see the way that the influx of newcomers has shifted the story about what online sex work is. Both journalists who are covering the online sex industry during the pandemic, and those newcomers who are trying to make a living within it, are coming to the realization that sex does not, in fact, sell itself. This is evidenced by the volume of articles on the theme coming out from almost every major news publication in the last few months. All of us who have been doing this job already know this: We have learned these lessons the hard way. We talk to each other about our failures, our frustrations and our fears—because doing so publicly doesn’t help us market ourselves as valuable to clients. Moreover, such conversations feed into the hand of anti-sex work crusaders who use the stories of our struggles as evidence that our work should be more heavily regulated or criminalized.What we have also learned through this pandemic is that our work is essential, it is the lifeline that many of our clients need in a very uncertain and increasingly isolated social world. I am grateful to be doing this work now—and that it still provides me a secure income—but I am also glad that I was able to make it sustainable before the world entered crisis mode.

Prison sometimes can feel like an affectionless desert. By the age of 20, I was in here dying of thirst. A lifer twice over with blood-stained hands from sins I had committed when I was 15, I carried the weight of despondency. What can bring a kid who has a life sentence back from the brink of despair? The only answer is love.One day I found myself sitting in my maximum-security cell, drowning under the waterline of our criminal justice system—a stone of hopelessness fastened around my neck. On the winds of a sentence of 40 years to life-plus, I carried the curses of those I had harmed, winds that blew out the internal wick bearing my spirit’s light. My eyes were blurry with tears that flowed from a spring of contrition and regret. I needed air; I wanted out of my pain, but I sunk under, deeper and deeper. Within me, an echo chamber reverberated with the verbal stones heaved at my 16-year-old identity four years earlier during court proceedings: “Evil kid…murderer…a danger…you should suffer…you should rot in prison.” That day, this harmony of hate was stuck in my head on repeat, synchronized with Jay-Z rapping out of the radio on the locker. He sang, “This is the number one rule for your set; in order to survive, gotta learn to live with regrets.” The results of my deeds were killing me; my regret was becoming too much to bear.

The only answer is love.

My Regrets Had Turned Into Depression

I could no longer live knowing I had caused two mothers to suffer, both my own and the mother of the young man I had murdered. I could no longer live with the self-hatred that infected my being. How could I survive the rest of my life in a place that constantly reminded me that I was worthless and unwanted? The stabbings, the shootings, the racism, the correctional indifference, the deep loathing of human life around me was overwhelming and unrelenting. I sat in my cell that day resolved on suicide. I reasoned it was the most loving thing I could do—for me, my family and the family of my victim. I had stolen someone’s son, brother, love; a theft not repayable that left me spiritually broken. I even stole away the hopes and of my parents as they gazed and gushed over me in infancy. That day, I thought that my life wasn’t worth much, but it was all I had left to give. I would hang myself. As death drew closer and closer, I became more and more convinced that what I was about to do was love. On that day, the prison was on lockdown. My cellmate was away at work; no one was out of their cells; the guards were in their office; the timing felt perfect. The cell walls absorbed the cold air that blew through the vent. If they thawed, it felt as if they would come down. The sobbing that escaped my heart and mouth muffled Jay-Z’s voice. I only heard his words in between breaths that had quickened to match the rate of my pulse. As I looked up at the light fixture to gauge if it would hold my weight, I soon felt I was running out of time. I wiped my tears with the sheet that I held in my hands.A voice inside my body sounded like my own. It sang, “You won’t hurt anymore, just do it. Do everybody the favor. Just do it already, piece of shit!” I was overcome with sadness. The voice goaded me still. “I’m going to,” I thought. I just needed a moment. The voice sang on in the courtroom stones, the Jay-Z, my sobbing. The song within me had reached the climax of its crescendo. I decided. It was time.

That day, I thought that my life wasn’t worth much, but it was all I had left to give. I would hang myself.

It’s Easy to Forget You Still Have Friends Behind Bars

Suddenly another voice joined the chorus. “Jacobs, you straight? The fuck?! You good, bro?” The voice was my buddy, Preach. He was incarcerated a few cells down from me. Like me, he had been locked up since he was a child and also had 40 years to life. I looked up from the floor to see his face in the cell door window. He pounded his hand on the top of the metal door and shouted to the control tower, “Open 118, Perez!” The door hummed open. Preach came inside my cell. I hid my face in the sheet in my hands. I was ashamed to have been seen, caught, in such a low moment. All at once my thoughts raced. I was flooded with more voices inside asking questions: Does he know what I was about to do? Who will he tell? If people know, will they think I’m a bitch?! Weak? Will the guards find out? Will my family? Question after question and thought after thought.Then he touched my shoulder. Suddenly, the questions and thoughts stopped. The perpetual anthem of hate ceased to play in my mind. There was something in his touch. Something soothing, healing, something God-like.It was love.

How the Love of Another Prisoner Saved Me From Suicide

Preach squatted down beside me and said, “It’s gon’ be alright, Jake.” His song was better than mine. I lifted my face from the sheet and his eyes found mine. I sang, “I can’t do this shit anymore, Preach.” My despair was out of tune with the love hymn he sang with his touch. He stood up and demanded, “Get up!” and lifted me off the toilet. Without words he pulled me into his embrace. He hugged me gently but firmly. I wept into his shoulder and held on to him for dear life. His hug was everything my soul needed that day. The love I felt inside his arms cleared the fog that obscured my thoughts. When we pulled apart, he said, “Don’t you ever let them get you here.”He held me for a brief moment only, but that moment has stuck with me ever since. He stood in my cell that day, never taking his hand away. He encouraged me. His words, his touch and presence told me I was worthy. In that moment, I was wanted, at least by him. I chose to stay alive for the sake of his love and friendship.

I chose to stay alive for the sake of his love and friendship.

Friends in Prison Are as Important as Friends on the Outside

There is no greater love than one that makes living worth it. Moreover, this one act of love allowed me to see that there were other loves for which I could live. During this darkest moment of my life, it was Preach’s love that lit my way out of despair.Preach continued giving me that love until I was transferred to another prison. He’d check up on me every day. He enlisted his cellmate and my own to do the same. They all loved on me. We loved on each other to keep one another alive. Today no matter what institution I’m in, I make it a point to show this same love to other incarcerated people. And, if you look around any prison yard, you’ll find a “Preach” on each of them. They are the people who affirm the life and worthiness of other incarcerated people. It’s a tradition, a cultural custom in this world. For me, this love-custom saved my life and became my own way of life. I am forever grateful for Preach’s love, a love that pulled me out of despair.

I was told that I shouldn't go to modeling casting calls after the age of 18. The truth is, I did, and I often lied about my age to get into them. Just before turning 19, I moved to New York City to pursue a career in acting. Modeling jobs became a way for me to make money on the fly without having to work a day job, which would, without a doubt, cut into audition schedules and class hours. I signed with my first agent while I was working at a nightclub. A regular of mine was a studio owner, who shared a space with a casting office. Soon, I met with the executive director of the casting office, and he set me up for an audition with a well-known agent in the area. “Make sure that you tell them that you’re sleeping with me,” he told me before leaving. This was obviously a joke, because I wasn’t sleeping with him, but I did start to get some late-night texts from him every now and then. Still, I assumed it was harmless.

My jaw dropped.

Creepy Photo Shoots Were All Too Familiar

After signing with the agency on a freelance basis, I decided to make profiles on reputable acting and modeling websites to snag my own jobs as much as I could. By the time I turned 22, I started to get a hang of the industry, getting five-to-eight auditions every week. Around this time, I had booked a modeling job for a “sportswear brand” on my own accord. The photoshoot was scheduled in a well-known studio space, but I thought it was odd considering it was mainly reserved for dancers and actors to rehearse and not for photography. The rooms were dimly lit with a soft, yellow glow that would make any photoshoot have a porno feel to it.When I arrived, the photographer showed me the wardrobe. Instead of sportswear, there was an array of thongs and large bras that didn’t even match. It looked as if he went to the clearance aisle of Century 21 and just grabbed a handful of lingerie without sorting through it. “Which sportswear brand is this for?” I asked the photographer.He replied vaguely, explaining he would sell the photos to companies that were interested.“Where are the sports bras and swimsuits?” I replied, receiving a smug look. “None of these are in my size,” I said.“Well, I guess you will just have to do the shoot topless,” he said in a serious tone.“I don’t understand. My sizes are listed on my profile.”I was getting really overworked at this point and trying to think of an easy escape, but I wanted my payment.“This is just what they had,” he said.Finally, I just exploded. “I’m too old for this shit,” I told him. “You can take photos with what we can use, and you have to pay me.”“I thought you were 18,” he said.My jaw dropped.It’s commonly known that it’s hard to get into modeling as you age. I never quite understood this. Besides, I know many 35-year-olds who look as if they just turned 24. We toughen as we get older. It’s not just in appearance that we toughen, but it’s also in our mental state. Is it possible that there are power-hungry individuals that know that younger women are easily manipulated? Plus, if every Victoria’s Secret ad showed a 17-year-old’s body, wouldn’t that encourage pedophilia?

As women, we need to continue to stand up for ourselves and our reputations.

Women Must Stand up and Fight for Their Reputations

Modeling always seemed like such a glamorous profession, but it’s far from it. I would hear female directors calling models on set “stupid” or “too ugly.” I would continue to get hit on by men in the industry who promised me lavish vacations or a bigger role if I just spent one night with them. I once showed up on the set of a “short film” that had a dungeon set-up so they could strap me in and tickle my feet. Luckily I was sent home when they saw I wouldn’t comply. In another instance, I was called back for a feature film that required real sex for the role. Things got pretty weird, but I was strong enough to filter out the shady jobs and requests. Not everyone can do that.Unfortunately, many younger women will find themselves with the urge to do these types of jobs in order to expand their name and credits. I was just short of giving up after one dinner with the guitarist of a famous pop singer. “Most women sleep with someone to get the part,” he told me. “If you’re not going to do that, it’s going to be really hard for you.” Thankfully, the #MeToo movement has shined the light on some of the shady activity that happens in the fashion and entertainment industry. But this isn’t enough. As women, we need to continue to stand up for ourselves and our reputations. We need to show that we can get the job because of our talent, and we need to be aware of the individuals who will prey on our desire to work in this field. The exploitation of women in these industries has been going on in the shadows for years and our strength in shining the light on this is only one small facet of its final departure.