My words are my remedy, when my thoughts nauseate me into a spiraling mess. As my pencil collides with my paper, chafing, scraping, pleading to be seen, waves of angst and pleasure finally find their source of rest. At the age of sixteen, I began to write. Freshly locked inside a cage of obsessive compulsion, iambic pentameter was a means of control. A poetic justice that plucked my heartstrings. A place where my thoughts withdrew in symphony, line by line, where I bore the brunt of frantic moments in spite. Mania! A few months ago, my room felt like a coffin. The square window draped with curtains, only allowing in a sliver of the world outside. My bed, a place where my eyes cracked red, left me wide awake. I grieved with my former self, lying inside of her. And when I arose, I left a rose, embedded between her hands. She bled a little from the cuts, reminding me of who I was parting with. Sanctifying me to who I truly am. Awakening! I am a lesbian. A woman lover. A hopeless romantic with fruitless diversions in finding tranquility inside another. I had to face coming out to my parents for the second time, and an unrequited love that was dreadful to tame. I had to face the reality that I can’t wear my heart on my sleeve. I can’t outright bare my name. A few months ago, a girl roused me, tapping me into the frequency of true attraction and desire. I didn’t know how to feel besides the intensity of her golden-hour eyes. It scared me at first, then led me to a confession of my want for her. I muddled into delirium after she denied me. Muzzled into the trappings of oversharing, my trauma was with her, and she didn’t feel like caring. The harsh consequences of the push-pin relationship were blinding. She stopped texting. I stopped minding. After all, she was my gay awakening. A symbol of the type of love I was searching for but had trouble finding. And here, here was when I felt the melody, the draft, the kick of my ink...bite. My identity was no longer fragmented, and I finally felt aligned. Reborn! I dwell in the ebb and flow of my literary creations because they are all I have. They carry me to the days ahead, driving my heart right into my skull. Reminding me that sometimes logic, facts, reason...they aren’t my means to an end. My imagination, that is what leads me onwards. Why am I passionate about pursuing writing? Because it challenges me to lean into feeling, a form of self-expression that somehow, I can’t seem to resist. A means of healing. And to share that with the world, to the people who might be enduring the same things as I, can help them push through their own struggles that wrestle them inside. And recently writing has pushed me out of my comfort zone. I share songs on social media, reflecting on the confusion, vulnerability, and obstacles of liking girls. Daily, I face being seen in-front of an audience for who I am. I express myself loudly with my clothes, clutching my heartstopper tote bag in the palms of my hands. It’s becoming easier to tell men I desire women, even if they ask me, “Are you sure?” Even with their puzzled looks, raising the bar of what a lesbian should be, should act, should look like. I realized I don’t have to abide to their image. I can wear my feminine tops, and still be a dyke.

I perceive reality like a world full of color and a world full of lies all at once. A symphonic soap film. A place where my mind tends to get lost. And when astray, my thoughts sink into my pillow, then my chest, then the deep. The deep waters that are opaque and dangerous, triumphing in the unknown. I plummet voluntarily. In this vast hydrosphere, I begin to feel the effervescence of freedom. Sounds that seem distorted and unclear awaken me, and I become curious of all the possibilities I could endure as I hover and suspend. Unnoticed by others. Noticed by me, not my thoughts, only then. This is what obsessive-compulsive disorder feels like after a wave of its mayhem and organized destruction. Routines, the need to double-check, and the need to reexamine my relationships, sink down with the sand. I’m half-awake, rejuvenated in this motion. When colors began to lose all their gravity, I had just turned fourteen. A sudden fear of people and their perceptions morphed my reality. Thoughts began to arise, vibrating my skull. I didn’t know where they came from, so I labeled them demonic, yet resourceful. A tool, telling me where to go, and what to do. A savior puppeteering me in repetitiveness. Over and over again, I succumbed. To stop the feeling of being a danger to others, all while endangering myself. To stop the feeling of perceived foulness in my odor, I showered, wiped, and bathed my skin red. I spiraled into myself as I become socially inept and incompetent. I was worrier, and I still I am. I worried by the second though, back then. So much, to the point where I found myself in an ambulance two years later. I remember the crack of my mother’s voice as she buried her face into my dad’s chest. The emergency vehicle was taking me to a place where my demonic savior could be cornered, unveiled in its creation of my chaotic mess. Here, I began to write. Locked inside the cages of obsessions and compulsions, iambic pentameter was a means of control. A poetic justice that plucked the strings of my righteousness. Bearing the brunt of spurred moments in spite. In spite because I am an artist, in spite because the words I feel so tethered to, they write me as I write. While in-patient, I experienced the brutality of feeling worse to get better. Losing my appetite, yet learning the coping skills needed to combat what lived in my head. This juxtaposition held my life by a thread. Therapy and medication were soon added. And when released, my life began again. I was reborn. A gypsy that remained, at least according to Fleetwood Mac, with the scars and irreversible wounds to prove that the old me wasn’t a monster to tame. I became boundless, living outside of my thoughts as much as I could. And with the pen, I resonated with the demon that still lives inside, interfering with my truth that I no longer try to hide. I plan to let my writing live on with me through my journey. I want to graduate next year with my English degree, and study more at Brown University. But I also want to live. Go on daring adventures. Sing and song-write. Compose my feelings into the keys of my piano, and the strings of my guitar. I want to tell stories to the world. My own, and others. Letting them travel far. With these stories, I could help the people that might be enduring the same things as I, pushing them through their own struggles that squirm inside. I am recovering, continuing to manage my thought spirals with medicine, therapy, and community. They have their ways. But that’s not to say I don’t have bad days. I still go through things, experience violent emotions, and come out “stronger.” But these episodes, they make my pain stick a little longer, like sewage at the bottom of a stream. At one point, some months ago, I learned that if your therapist instructs you to douse most of your sleeping pills in Dove’s moisturizing shampoo, as you question whether you’ll make it to tomorrow—you will have a breakthrough. An incredible, transcendent, universal breakthrough. I am always ready to plummet, to swim, to rise. It’s the act of becoming that keeps me going. In it, I see brighter futures, brighter than my days now, flash before my eyes.