A few nights ago I thought I heard my neighbor slap his girlfriend after I heard indiscriminate muffled yells through my apartment walls. I couldn’t be certain what actually happened, so after listening for a while and hearing no more sounds, I did nothing. For three days I haven’t left my apartment. I didn’t go to class yesterday and have no intention of going today. I’ve had moments of numbness that dissolve into crying for no apparent reason. Then this morning I put make-up on for the first time in over two years just to see what I would feel like. I looked in the mirror and felt more masculine than I ever felt.

If you sit and contemplate what you did today or yesterday or last week, all you can come up with are these seemingly unrelated discrete moments. Sometimes I think these moments of randomness must follow some sort of trajectory. I can just feel the connections and it haunts me until I can actually explain why I think domestic violence relates to me, a trans-man, putting make-up on after a spending several days retreating from my life.