Dear Self,

For you it is November 9th, 2016. Despite all odds, Donald Trump is president. Mike Pence, governor of your home state of Indiana, is his VP.

You are 17 right now. You were born into a world run by George W. Bush. You spent your whole childhood hearing your parents yelling at the tv, angry at the Texas governor in the White House.

You grew up in Obamanation. You saw months of “YES WE CAN” and “CHANGE” stickers going up, and a magnet your family still has get put onto your refrigerator. You heard your mother’s sigh of relief when Barack Obama was announced the 44th president. That was half your lifetime ago.

You spent the last year following the campaigns. You were not surprised by Hillary Clinton running again. You “felt the Bern” of the somewhat radical Independent candidate previously unknown to you, Bernie Sanders. You laughed off the wild reality tv star Donald Trump’s campaign.

Months went by. Bernie and Hillary were fighting hard leading up to the primaries. Republicans slowly started to drop out. Big names like Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Chris Christie left the race. Bernie didn’t do good enough in the primaries, which was upsetting to most of your friends, your older brother, and your mom, who all voted for him. Ted Cruz fell off, defeated, in May.

It was down to Hillary and Trump.

You followed the comments made at their rallies. On their social media. You heard a lecture about the election from Josh Gillin of Politifact at Indiana University over the summer. You won an award for an opinion piece you wrote on Trump. As the election day grew closer, you watched every presidential debate. You analyzed them in class.

Last night, you stayed up until 4 A.M. to see the results of this election. You sat through excruciatingly slow interviews, political analysis, and different predictions. You couldn’t turn away from the blue and red maps, the aggressively American backgrounds, the anxious masses.

The tired tv hosts were right, it was a nail-biter.

As Trump gave his victory speech, you wept.

You wept for the months you spent wishing this wouldn’t happen. You wept for the 1920’s suffragettes, for the descendents of MLK and Cesar Chavez, for the Orlando victims. You wept for me. The people I joined. The people who will join me.

I am dead.

You learned in your final moments that homophobes look like normal people. They are not all rednecks with beer guts wearing ten-gallon hats. They are more elusive than that. They can be dressed smart. They can have friendly voices. Familiar names and faces.

A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend killed you. Someone you live near. You might have passed them in a car. In the mall. In the school hallways. It was someone that people you knew,  knew. You probably could’ve gotten their Twitter handle if you had heard their name before.

You were killed in a city that VP Pence had once stood in.

People tried to learn about your killer. Were they someone you knew? Someone who just went crazy? Someone who couldn’t handle who you held hands with?

You were too young, the local news anchors said. Your school administration said. Your mom said.

Mike Pence didn’t say anything at all.

Your friends didn’t say much. They cried. They withdrew. They wore baggier clothes. They bought switchblades. They washed “*****” and “ladyboy” off of your tombstone. They wondered about joining you, voluntarily and not.

The school newspaper’s headline: DEAD AT 17.

No one thought it would happen to you, except you. You stayed up late at night, imagining your funeral. The first thing you did in the morning was practice for your wake. Every time you left your house, you were a dead man walking.

No one  believed this more than you did.

The news anchors said it was just one of a string of murders. People said it was an isolated incident. Your friends said it was a hate crime. Your mom said it was the worst thing that  ever  happened to her.

There was no question that you were gone, even when they found you- chest jumping. There was only one thing to wonder: who was next?

Not an if, but a when.

I hope the when is  never.

All my love- to you and everyone else,

Yourself

I can see you
Sneaking into the kitchen at midnight
Turning on the light as if
It is the only cure to your problems
Just to waft through
The shelves and shelves of self hatred

I can see you
Hiding behind a baggy t-shirt
That is supposed to be baggier than it actually is

I can see you
Not wanting to get too close to anyone
Because the way that their hands
Traipse over the
Mountains and lumps that are
Your body
Makes you feel all sorts of uncomfortable

I can see you
Because
I am you

I can see how we've lived our entire lives
In fear
Of ourselves

People tell you that "It's just food"
No.

It is a comforting hand when no one is there
It is a way to feel good and bad simultaneously
It is a way to survive

Only it would be a lot easier to survive
If you didn't hate yourself whilst doing it

Right?

sometimes, i miss being sick.

i miss the feeling of my sharp ankles on the cold scale. the scale has been hidden from my judgemental eyes.

i miss the automatic caloric calculator, the blinding neon-sign. it's still there, always and impossible to ignore, like television subtitles. but i eat anyway.

i miss the feeling of my jeans becoming baggier around pencil legs. yesterday i had to go to american eagle to buy the same pair of ripped jeans, two sizes larger than what i was a year ago.

i miss the blue polka-dot Tupperware in the farthest corner of my closet that i used to erase the shame of feeling full. i can't have containers anywhere in my bedroom.

i miss the feeling of drinking so much water that my body becomes a shallow pool that my insides float in. i have a limit on the amount of fluids i can consume in a day.

i miss walking into a meal knowing exactly how to eliminate all of it, without question. now when i do behaviors i feel the shame of my whole family in my chest.

i miss karaoke nights. i can't sing any of the songs i did in the hospital. it just feels wrong.

i miss sitting in a circle of other sick girls and forgetting, for a moment. they're in different places all over the world, enjoying life as recovered anorexics.

i miss staying up late talking to my roommate and questioning whether recovery is worth it, or even possible. she's in california with her girlfriend, enjoying being alive.

i miss licking salt of ice cubes. everything is locked into safes.

but mostly, i miss you. you're gone.

.

When you are born,
They label you
But then as you grow older,
You are told not to label other people
“But then why am I a girl?”
Your parents ask what you mean
“The doctors gave me a label when I was born
Right?”
They tell you that you are correct and say “So what?”
“So...That means that I can be a boy right?”
They tell you no

When you get into high school,
The boys will look at your *** or your legs
And start to whistle or tell their other guy friends about you
So you start to wear baggier pants and longer shirts
They stop looking at you
And stop pointing and telling their friends
Now?
Well, now they just laugh
At your baggy pants, and your overly large T-Shirts

When you get into college,
You cry every night because they call you
She, Miss, girl, and everything else inbetween
You cry every night
Wishing
No no no
Hoping that they will wake up and call you
He, Mr. boy, and everything else inbetween

One night you sit in your college dorm,
Your roommate leaving in a short skirt
With a boy that she really likes
And you are just sitting on your bed studying
For that huge test the next day
But you can not
Something is bugging you

You go into the bathroom with the scissors
You think of your old childhood memories,
High school boys and their catcalling,
And now
The very thing that is making you do this

Cutting your hair

You go to class the next day and the professor stops you at the door
“Excuse me sir. Do I know you?”
Yes.
You say
You do. You are the professor who called me she
And everything else inbetween
I would like you to call me something different
The rest of your classmates see this and freak out
“What have you done to your hair?!”
“It was so pretty before.”
You simply tell them that you got tired of it getting in the way

You jump back to the present,
Your kids running up to you,
“Daddy! Daddy, come play with us.”
Your husband walks up and kisses you
With mud filling your mouth
Ew.
You exclaim
What is this? Mud?
You kids.
You laugh and join your family outside
The family that will love and accept you  to the very end
Because they were the ones who helped you with everything
And now feel happy
Finally after all of these years of hiding
And trying to be yourself have paid off

And thus,
Living happily ever after

You've been to hell before
Danced and made love to the devil
He messed with your heart
But you let him in
And he messed with your head
But you took what he handed you
And you thought life couldn't get worse
But you never knew it could be like this
And this isn't the devil
He may think he's bad but
He is good and he is light and
Now you're staying up late
You lay there and reach out above you
And you're numb while your fingers
Crinkle and uncrinkle and they're stiff,
Like they've been frozen in time for a decade
You're just now learning to use them again
While your eyes cross and roll back
And you mumble incoherently about the things
You wish you should have said to him
Before it was too late
And you can't look yourself in the mirror
You can look disgustedly at yourself but
You can't make eye contact with the reflection
Of your fading blue eyes
So you search how to throw up without it
Being so dangerous for you because
You'll be ****** to go through the pain
Without him noticing the final result
And you're digging up the past,
You buy more foundation and mate gloss
And you wonder what color he would like
But he probably doesn't like any of this but you
Just don't know what he likes and
You probably never did fully know everything right
And you'd grow your hair out but you're
Too fat and it's too hot for it
But when you master that toothbrush technique finally
You'll let it grow out and you'll buy new, pretty clothes
And maybe he'll find something worthwhile in you then
And if he doesn't
You can wipe the makeup off
Chop your hair off and put different clothes on,
Baggier clothes
And if he still doesn't see potential
Then I guess you're just out of luck because
You've had someone inside of you
Someone that fit into places but you've never
Had anyone inside of you everywhere like this
And it's amazing and it tastes bitter and it's exhilarating and
It's something you want to mourn and something you want to hold forever
But if it's not enough,
If it never will be enough,
All the things you have to offer and the
Things you both once planned,
If he doesn't find it good enough
You can always live in this glass case,
Like a trophy, a prized possession
Because you've went through life feeling like there was something missing,
Something that belonged but you forgot what it was and now
You remember it and you will always cherish it
And hold it tight like your life depends on it
Because it does,
Your life depends on this.