When I was ten my mother stood in the kitchen with a wooden spoon in her hand and announced that I needed to go on a diet. That was the moment I became a woman.
Seven months ago, the house I had been living in with my boyfriend, Dave, and my miniature dachshund, Molly, burned to the ground while we were checking in for dinner reservations in downtown Milwaukee.
I love reading and writing about grief. I am fascinated by it. Joy, too. What mysteries they are–it’s impossible to figure them out but I love trying to.
When I finally realized, accepted, believed, that there was nothing wrong with sexuality, that there had never been anything wrong with me, I evicted the ghost of that “something” and took back my body, my sexuality.
I sat in the murky water of my shame in the basement. I wanted to get as low in the earth as I possibly could and the basement was as close to that as I could get.
