I am choosing to interpret a few years of anger and venting about the other site and what those fucking people did to me as a sign that I am called on to say “fuck this” and do something different. It must be “because I’m someone who can.”

I borrowed that title from a fierce motherfucker whose words lifted me up while I lay on my couch in Chicago , crying my eyes out because I’d fucked up again and had to experience the consequences and the hopelessness of that all over again.

Please don’t be mad, I’m whispering “thank you” to a force of nature who picked me up by my shoulders and wiped my tears dry that day.

And to one of my very last friends left in that city who put me in his car, checked under my bed for monsters, and gave me a change of scenery from that den of despair and debauchery.

I was never wanted or welcomed. I was never invited.

I was that person in that space, holding my head up and showing up anyway.

And I didn’t even have to do it as a “trans” person being treated even worse than I was.

I had … straight up .. given the fuck up on on walking in and showing all the way up.

I accepted your challenge to “show all the way up.”

God help us all because I’m pretty sure that you didn’t mean “LIKE THAT.”