Most girls worry about generic things when it comes to planning their wedding; What cake flavor they should get, what songs they should play, what color the bridesmaids' dresses should be and so on and so forth. A girl that wears her mother's dress and her sharp suit husband-to-be will not have to worry about their parents not making it to their wedding or about the legalities of their right to be married being contested. Their love, and their union, will not be tainted by hatred and prejudice simply because it is misunderstood as sin. I do not get that luxury. On most days it makes me angry, and on some days, I can only feel a painful longing. There is a tender, delicate loneliness that comes with queerness, especially as a lesbian. Like a caterpillar in its woven cocoon, that solitude is both protection and imprisonment. As with all caterpillars, the cocoon unravels and something saturated and beautiful must be born from it. I have seen other butterflies, colored, and patterned, flying amongst each other, and even landing on populated bushes, flowering trees, and concrete ledges. I thought I could do the same. So, I tried to fly with the rest of them, but I quickly found that as a woman, who will only ever marry if it is to another woman, there are no places truly welcoming for a butterfly of my wings. Will I drift forever against the blue sky? Never landing, only ever in flight? Yet, soon comes a gateway to a garden. The voice of a muse rings out, melodious and rich as it centers me in my flight. Chappell Roan sings at the gate, blazing red like a heart out of a chest and shining with a gleam that only courage can provide. When I come into the garden flowers bloom all around me and that darkened longing in me is fulfilled. There are other butterflies here, ones that look like me and ones that I have never seen before. I am a creature of faith and of belonging, and here I have found my temple. Chappell Roan is one of the greatest artists I have ever come across. Not only is she musically talented, but her lyricism and passion really shine through. Like her queer predecessors before her such as Tracy Chapman and David Bowie, Chappell embodies aspects of queer culture that have always been looked down upon by society. From her drag makeup to her explicit lyrics and her upfront activism, Chappell is unapologetic about every aspect of herself. Truly, a diamond in the rough. It is important to have the stories of queer people being told in all forms of media. From film to literature and music, there are so many things that society gets harmfully wrong about us. Currently, we are in a critical era where raising our voices for ourselves is becoming increasingly important. As the world engages in more political cynicism, prejudiced movements, and endless cruelty, yet again are queer people singled out as deviants. As people that do not belong. Chappell Roan rejects these notions. The world tells her to quiet down, and she sings louder. I admire her for all her strength in addition to all her talent. Seeing Chappell Roan break out into the music industry to reach the hearts of people who were ignorant or hateful, and creating new spaces of warmth for queer people especially younger queer women, fills me with so much hope for us that now, I am not empty or longing, but I am overflowing.

Jessica Herndon Ethel Hayes Destigmatization of Mental Health Scholarship June 10, 2024 Eat me, please. For I am a peach, through and through, from the cavity of the stem to the fuzz of the skin, and from the soft of the flesh to the hollow of the pit. Make sure to stop at the pit, and don’t swallow down the amygdalin. Handle me carefully too, for nobody wants a peach that bruised. Eat me, before I spoil, in whatever way you please. All that matters is that you do. The first bruise comes when I am in fifth grade, I hold my mother’s hand as we walk into our Baptist church, with my picture book bible clutched in my other hand. I am led to the kids' section where we watch an animated video, when God rained manna from the clouds for Moses and the Israelites. The woman teaching us says that this is the extent of his benevolence. She then breaks crackers for us to share, and our little hands snatch them greedily. When I swallow the cracker, my stomach rejects it. For the rest of that holy day, I hold my hand to my stomach and try not to let my frown show. I feared telling anyone of my hurt, showing as that singular darkened bruise. I thought this was a show of God’s rejection of me, as all I could hear was the voice in the back of my mind that echoed, "He does not want you. Not for what you are." We stopped going to church the year Covid hit. That was the last year of my middle school career. That trio of years shaped me to be who I am, and it broke me down till nothing remained of me but baseless, all-consuming fear. Questions plagued me, stinging one after one like I crushed a wasp nest under my foot just to watch them swarm. There were so many bruises that popped up that year. One blackened circle after another atop thin skin. Why am I like this? Why am I the way I am? I never told anyone when these questions arose, and even now I wouldn't dare bring it up over iced coffee to an old friend. Afterall, who didn't want to die at some point during their middle school years? And it's not as if I wanted to die, I was too terrified of the pain to even consider it. I simply knew that I should not have been born that way in the first place. Maybe in another life I was born correctly. Maybe in that life I didn't fear death because I knew God wouldn't accept such an abomination into his kingdom. “You’re not an abomination” My best friend tells me over the phone. I want to believe her, because she’s always right, and I don't want to be the first to make her wrong. But I don't know if she is. That dark, magnetic void in the bottom of stomach that never learned to digest, disagrees with her. “It's severe anxiety.” My doctor told me earlier that year when she noticed all my lesions. The rotted pieces of me I thought I could hide. They taste so bitter, and they look even worse. I wish they weren't a part of me, and I wish no one else could see them either. “We’ll get you some medicine for it and for your depression symptoms” She adds, writing something down on a clipboard as my mother nods. Her lips are pressed in a tight line, I must turn away and watch the clock tick on the wall because if I looked at my mother’s face any longer, I would cry. I had been holding it in, all day, from when I marked the Yes and Highly Agree boxes on the sheet labelled “Mental Health” to the moment I sat down and couldn't stop shaking when they drew blood from my thumb. "You should not exist. They know it, you know it. You delude yourself into belonging, when the truth is that I am all that you are." The void tells me when I force a smile at my doctor. Girls like me do not get things like these. Therefore, something must be wrong with me. I must be the rotted peach on the tree, cut off and thrown away so it does not soil the other fruits. No pill I could ever swallow would change that fact. I was at my worst then, practically rancid and poisoned like the pit itself up until junior year of high school. I tried every year, then and afterwards, to be perfect at everything that I did. I knew that there was a bitter, blackened part of me that could not be accepted unless the rest of me was saccharine. But as the springs came and gone, I started dreaming of a future that I could begin to see for myself, shedding those brown spots and leaving room for new, sweeter parts to grow from the peach pit. I want to be a physical therapist; I have come to realize. I want to help people mend what is broken and rotted. Maybe if I could see how we are not made for perfection, I would stop expecting it from myself. It's never been easy to acknowledge how far I've come from how low I had fallen. It is easier to pretend that those years were swallowed by time and could not attach themselves to me anymore. I should not have to remember all the parts of me, the ones that I would not tell others because I can see the curve of disgust in their features when they understand. But the truth is that I have always been a peach, I will not ever know what it is like to not have a pit, but it is not all that I am, it is only what lays beneath a sweet and tangy mesocarp.