Why I Miss My Fat Body

CW/TW: mentions of mental health, violence/politics of the body... 

(fatphobia, eating disorders, transphobia, sexual violence/rape, survival sex work)

          A part of me is scared to admit, but it's true: my body has changed, not just physically, but in its essences as well. Not only that, the relationships between my body and my mind/society/beyond, have all changed also. Can a rap*d and bruised body bloom as bright again ? How can my body ever forgive me for negotiating a price, like a cheap potted houseplant desperate to be watered, even if/when it's urine... I root for sex work in all its histories/glories, but not that, not as a trans woman of colour not knowing/believing her full worth yet. And while I must acknowledge the privileges that has helped me out of and away from survival sex work, as well as the intellectual ego to dare claim my worth beyond survival... I am here: raw, broken, rotting but not dead yet, trying/growing to (un/re)learn self-care/love, to appreciate my body and all its flaws again, to be able to enjoy pleasure again without mental/emotional pain, to softly trust finally, and to safely breathe again.

          I knew I wouldn't miss being fat, not that I consider myself "thin/skinny" now only from a 3XL to XL and losing about 30 pounds, as I always knew of fatphobia and the aim/normality/glorification of slenderness in our society. Yet I still miss my fat body, especially with the years of working on self-acceptance and self-love after much violence, I miss my fat body and the weight it held back... It certainly is a practice of grace as well as maintaining my social anxiety/triggers while smiling in response to neck-cracking compliments towards my body/weight loss. I didn't realize I had lost that much weight until people started making such statements, I guess the silver-lining is that I finally get some compliments (more like an impression of approval? still toxic...) from my mother as well. What most people are not understanding/considering is the fact that weight loss is a very common/natural reality after trauma incidents, as well as serious concerns with inhabiting eating disorders. I started losing weight when I was having difficulty securing employment last summer: the financial limitations on healthy resources as well as the traumas of sexual violence from survival sex work definitely took a toll on my body (and it proves to show/feel). Also, I figured with my appetite fluctuating, (common due to mental health and feminizing hormones) that it must have been a contributing factor as well. Thus I don't celebrate my weight loss after all, and yet for the glory of my survival and in honour of its journey of changes: I continue to celebrate my body instead, not its non-consensual affects of socio-economical politics...

"I want to make love, but my hair smells of 

War and running and running."

- Warsan Shire

          Beyond missing my fatter/thicker body, I realize that it's important for me to reflect on and write about because in all honesty, I miss my body in general and whole, no matter the size. It also interests/concerns me that from interpersonal observations: I'm more able to have sex without flashbacks of past ra*e/sexual assaults with people I have less emotional connections/reliance with. I come to understand that after much violence, I have been surviving and coping by distancing/disconnecting with my body physically, spiritually, and sexually. It hurts both me and my partner(s) that I'm not ready to share deeper intimacy without being triggered yet, but at least I don't cry pleasuring myself physically anymore... Such raw confessions I force out of me like waterfalls: drowning myself in the sea of clarity and truth, rivering grace and forgiveness, meditating on healing from the inside out.

          I grew up hating my body with such internal/violent shame, then after years of (re/un)learning to love/care for my body again and preparing for its changes, external violence came and I'd say we're back to square one, but I try not to think like that anymore. To break such intergenerational/ancestral and cycling patterns of violence against femmehood, we must understand it to be a non-linear journey of cleansing grace that is only manifested through/from the light of internal/collective reflection/elevation... I must forgive myself for often false-practicing visibility of body positivity as self-love, as I know now that healing is much more than embracing the physical, but to confront the painful/emotional as well. Sharing my body without knowing its worth became comfortable, and all I had left is power without substance in its reclamation of nothingness. This journey starts with a confession: for I have shared/used my body without care, for the ways I would neglect myself of food, rest, cleaning, and for I have lost my ways with loving my body... Thus I surrender/pause/breathe/start again.

          My body: not a temple but a garden, not to be built but grown, not to be laboured but watered on; I miss fatness/fullness/wholeness, within myself that is honoured with a body in all its phases/changes. This body is not missing, not wasting, not rotting but re-seeding/planting/soiling... My garden watered/meditated with tears and prayers, like a test to patience and a practice for grace; I'll say healing takes forever but then we'll all look back and realize, that we were still blooming gloriously and ever softly all along.

Quarantine Diaries: Solitude & Solidarity

("Bedroom in Arles" #3 - Vincent Van Gogh, 1889)

CW/TW: mentions of rape, PTSD flashbacks/memories, bullying, suicidal-grey

          Glorious nights like these: where you start falling in love with solitude, when you honour the unheard in solidarity by listening, by feeling, by holding yourself tighter - softer - holier, when you start to fill yourself with grace while surrendering to the light of uncertainty... How trees, are teaching ways of healing and patience, as kindness is a practice and love is too; all but a peaceful practice of breathing.

          Back at my mom's house in the rural suburbs, the home I survived throughout middle-school and high school, my room the same as this blog, so full of memories of my past and becoming. At least I'm no longer sleeping on a mattress where I was rap*d on in a cold, dark basement room somewhere outside the city, where I would also routinely place my tight twin-sized mattress in a corner to cuddle/hold myself at night.... Thus I woke up today realizing that maybe I've been having difficulty sleeping since I've been back because here in the center of my room, on a elevated, wooden bed frame: a queen-sized mattress with nowhere to hide. It's a heavy bed full of traumatic memories far too distant to be triggered by; I think I started crying myself to sleep and feeling as if rotting in bed at 12 years old... I wanted to cry when I found a suicidal-grey note I wrote at 13 about insecurities with friendships/belonging/fitting-in, experiences with bullying, and how maybe coming out as queer wasn't the best idea in school. Maybe a part of my reaction is to feel numb, but reflecting on how I've wanted to die since 12/13 years old even silences/awes my cynical/suicidal-grey self today. 20 surviving 2020: I take off award certificates off my walls and tape on photographs and artworks, recycling VOGUE magazines, Chinese self-help books and reorganizing with books by women and femmes before, of poetry and philosophy...  I am a woman (un/re)learning, practicing my worth, a flower trying to breathe/blossom, a femme softly surviving through grace despite it all.

          Solitude is not safe for a person feeling like me, and I understand that solidarity is key to the community that have helped me/us survived. "You are not alone/We are in this together" sayings serve nothing as statements of solidarity but everything as soft self-reminders to stay alive. If a flower doesn't bloom, do you blame the plant or better its soils ? Like my new resonance with my newer, more mobile and twin-sized mattress, with also how I feel like a potted houseplant: the lesson of light becomes the freedom of mobility/shape-shift, to adapt/control during change with the darkness being such constant uncertainty... The first challenge I find to loving myself in solitude is to admit that I'm scared, to surrender myself to the possibilities ahead while trusting my grace. I recall to my mother of how she would always scold me as a kid for saying that "I'm scared", I'm sure it must have connected with the queer/transphobia and how I was always told to "boy/man up, stop being a sissy about everything" while growing up, but I explain of how I find peace/power in reclaiming uncertainty and fear, that what has kept me going was to able to say: I am/was scared, but I do/did/will do it anyway.

"Feeling is Researching Feeling is integral to a Creative Practice..."

          Surviving and striving between the art of solitude and solidarity: I practice by reflecting and researching on my feelings, observing emotions as you would watch the waves meeting its shore, exploring notions of a creative/artful/meditative process without means of production but simply by being, feeling, and (re)learning/creating... I begin to realize of the love I still need to fill within, for the responsibilities of healing myself still falls on me, thus then unfolding/sharing/creating. The conflicts within seem to be often tied onto the politics of desirability, visibility, and lovability as I love/hate the complicity of my beauty/body to be desired/fetishized, the violence of my being to visible/spectacled, and the cynicism of my worth to be loved so desperately. Self-love will continue to be a rivering journey for my oceans within: Planting soft seeds and planning gardens of self-reclamation/liberation/revolution for an eternal blossom/spring.

"Wisdom is knowing I am nothing; 

Love is knowing I am everything... 

and between the two my life flows."

- Nisargadatta Maharaj

          As a sensitive/dramatic poet/lover, I find myself the need to glorify survival and healing, yet so often in reality, its peaceful, quiet/anxiety-inducing and a test of patience. Sometimes there aren't pretty words to contextualize pain, only the strive to cope and move on. And during this pandemic of uncertainty, we must remember to hold on harder/tighter/softer for those in need/at risk... Nothing but healthy/safe vibes/wishes/prayers to/for all, and let's work from our privileges to fill in the gaps of injustice while demanding/fighting/advocating/(un/re)learning in solidarity.

More Community Resources:
COVID-19: The 519 - INFORMATION AND UPDATES
COVID-19: Emergency Support Fund for Sex Workers
COVID-19 Resources for Indigenous, POC, Trans, Disabled & Undocumented Communities
SCARBOROUGH FOOD SECURITY INITIATIVE
COVID-19 Black Emergency Support Fund
#RentRelief for Immigrants During #COVID19
BLACK FOOD TORONTO: A Food Sovereignty Initiative
Covid-19 Aid for Hijra community in Bangladesh
Queer Tamils Emergency Support Fund

Quarantine Diaries: Belonging & Loneliness

("Bedroom in Arles" #2 - Vincent Van Gogh, 1889)

CW/TW: mentions of rape, mental health, body traumas

          They say study/work from home, but now a house is forced to be a workplace, a classroom, a home, to be fun, purposeful, to be a trigger and shelter all at once... I don't live in my own home, like a mermaid drowning, I swim to survive. How do you work from home when a house is not a house but a swamp: where you cry yourself to sleep, when you stay up at night to feel, writing of questions and prayers never answered... We can call it self-reflection, but I know it to be self-destruction.

          I always say that home is where water flows, but it also shows true and vulnerable to my uncertainty with belonging. During a time where we are asked to stay "home", I couldn't help but wonder of how that means diversely across experiences and expressions. Those who have left their homes in search of betterment, those separated from homes by force, those in desperate search of refugee and shelter... in contrast with those who have multiple locations of "home", those who have intersectional and diverse roots of home, those who have a choice of "home"... Such privilege maybe, but many with chosen homes/families are only by a choice of survival. My homeland is Taiwan, my chosen family is in Tkaronto (Toronto), and my discourse of home is still wherever water flows. It is connected with my belief that the home to our humanity is tied through the source of life: water. (also as an Earth sign, water feels vital and essential to the fluidity and freedom of my breath)

          Yet the social politics of belonging, something I have been observing and reflecting on myself, really is also the art of feeling lonely, as well as the discourse of visibility - which all can also be layered with the politics of desirability, but that's for another day. I came to understand that such complications and conflicts manifest through the instability within the homebody (the self). As a survivor it is hard to believe in the poetics of my body being a temple, but I do believe that the body is holy in essence, glorious in all its flaws and imperfections. And still til this day, the violence in my mind always harms the body...

She sleeps where she was raped
Sheets washed but stained
Scents gone but memories stay
She turns and turns
She tucks herself in
She turns into a corner
She prays please to no one
She cries pleasing herself
She pleads praise for nothing
She whispers of love poems and
She writes for her eulogies where
She sleeps to escape -
Stairs and naps leading to traps
She wanders for safety
She wonders for sanity

Quarantine Diaries: Staying In & Alive

("Bedroom in Arles" #1 - Vincent Van Gogh, 1888)

CW/TW: mentions of suicidal grey ideation, mental health, interpersonal/collective trauma 

          Like a lifeless log on a cold beach rocking back and forth like a baby shaking from the waves urgency as it’s only motivation for movements... How can we not realize, that such panic is only a distraction: The virus is real, but the economy is not. 

          I thought I would be good at social distancing and staying inside as someone who routinely self-isolates due to one's mental illness, but how can one be good at something when they're not feeling good at all ? I've always said that sanity is a privilege, but how cynical is it to feel yourself becoming insane with only intervals of clarity. Such unsafe uncertainties with reality, I pray that submission is just survival and that salvation is only unfolding, slowly... They say public health and safety; I ask where, when, and for who ? Everyday my heart wonder and worry for who they have always and are still so ready to leave behind: undocumented folks, sex workers, working-class parents, folks experiencing homelessness, essential service and medical-care workers, elders/children/anyone chronically ill/with a compromised immune system, folks stuck in abusive households, folks incarcerated, refugees, as well as First Nations folks on reserves... etc. Colonial-capitalism shows itself with fragile systems of profit over people, and with such ignorant privilege that most only awake to injustice from a call of crisis.

          Like a wilting wallflower, with rotting soils and only watered desperately: a houseplant dreaming of a garden, a sick joke she's still learning to laugh at... Being suicidal makes me feel selfish, as there are people dying, risking their next breath, and here I daydream of me dying the next day. How unappreciated my breath must feel: unworthiness, a flower asking why she deserves to bloom. The worst phone calls are of those that go to voicemails, I don’t know what it is of me trapped in a basement room while the people I love are risking it all... Such privilege to breathe, such abundance to feel, and such complicity to even understand: They say stay home but what about those still searching ?

What we need more of is compassion

What we need more of is loving care

What we need more of is justice...

And yet my heart also aches for

Us privileged enough to self-quarantine but

Maybe not sane enough to

Survive... 

Some Community Resources:

Crowdsourcing Safety

COVID-19: Emergency Support Fund for Sex Workers

COVID-19 Black Emergency Support Fund

SCARBOROUGH FOOD SECURITY INITIATIVE

Undocumented Migrants COVID-19 Fund
MASKS FOR PINE RIDGE

Liberated Capital: A Decolonizing Wealth Fund

Why I Don't Have Friends

          What are friendships ? And how do they align/contrast/intersect with other forms of relationships through a shared socio-personal intimacy ? From birth and since the possibilities of communication/comprehension, we learn to navigate the world through socialization; we learn new perspectives beyond oneself along the way as we grow/develop in contexts of the socio-economical, personal/political, geographical, and even the historical/cultural realities that we experience both individually and collectively. Thus the question of friendship has always intrigued me, as an immigrant-settler moving from such family-centered/oriented/dominated cultural ideals to colonized Turtle Island built so violently towards capitalistic individuality. Yet on top of it all: how do you navigate being the only trans person in a room after being the only POC/immigrant in the room, while still being the only fat person in that room... Through the privileges of basic survival and safety in North America, I find myself building self-awareness, confidence, and actualization while at the same time becoming more bitter and discouraged with the socio-political realities that I witness and have the access of experiencing. It has been clear to me that bonds of friendly relations (especially through puberty/teenagehood: the most socially-impressionable ages of character-development and through cis-heteronormative society under a colonial-capitalistic context) are dominated by norms of binary-gendered behaviours, thus the paradox of friendship as well as its dilemmas with socialization beyond labeling/belonging continues.

          A qualitative research on "Transgender Friendship Experiences: Benefits and Barriers of Friendships across Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation" (2014) reflects that "although participants were asked to describe unique friendship benefits and barriers with individuals of different identities, many of their responses resonated with the way friendship has been described in the general friendship literature. General features of friendships include having someone to talk to, emotional support, acceptance, and shared experiences (Duck, 1991; Rawlings, 1992). Participants described their friendships similarly but usually transgender specific experience was central to their definitions of support, acceptance, and experiences. For example, instead of having someone to talk to, a benefit expressed by transgender participants was can talk about transgender issues. Articulation of friendship benefits and barriers made it clear that transgender identity was salient to how participants were defining 'experiences.'" It is crucial to explore/analyze such socio-political relations/realities through marginalized experiences of "non-normative" perspectives not in the light of identity politics, but for the love of transformative justice/inclusion/community as well as dismantling systematic notions of "normality". Especially when experiencing social discrimination, marginalization, and/or levels of exclusion on a daily as well as even rejection/abuse from the biological notions of "family" through childhood/adolescence, the discussion of friendships complicates as we often view friendly bonds within communities of shared trauma to be our chosen families. So if my trans/gender-variant and racialized siblings are not my friends, who is ? And again, what are friendships anyway ? Of course I have many cis-heteronormative allies throughout the circumstances of life, some I would even feel guilty for when I say I have no friends... but what about the bonds and loyalties so rooted in gendered solidarity in the name of binary segregation ? How can I truly befriend and trust when most of times they mention "girls" they don't think of girls like me... girls like us ? Sure we can continue in respectful, or even friendly encounters, but if my woman/femmehood is not recognized/honoured, I can't help but wonder of my humanity when their privileges/comforts are challenged down the line.

          I remember when I first came to Canada starting middle-school: the only out-and-queer immigrant kid, chubby and feminine, being told that I would be gay if I befriend girls but told I was not masculine or "normal" to hang out with the boys. I remember coming out as gay and cis-white girls befriending me as their GBF, but then I also remember losing friends in high school after coming out as trans... From the results and discussions from the research cited above, there are about "eight benefits and six barriers... expressed in reference to cisgender and heterosexual (normative) friends when compared to transgender and sexual minority (non-normative) friends" (2014). Yet what is truly interesting is of how patterned the responses are (to me as a trans-feminine person anyways) between the listed benefits: "(1) helps me feel 'normal'; (2) transgender/sexuality issues do not dominate conversation and friendship; (3) validation more powerful from someone with normative identity; (4) more opportunity for friendship due to larger population; (5) emotionally stable; (6) helps me present as identified gender ('pass'); (7) offers more diverse perspectives and interactions; and (8) opportunity to educate about transgender experience" and the listed barriers: "(1) not knowledgeable on issues of gender, sex, and privilege; (2) insensitive use of language in reference to identity; (3) difficult to talk about transgender/sexuality issues; (4) fosters feelings of discomfort; (5) not understanding non-normative experience; and (6) fewer shared experiences". Such data is helpful to analyze the struggles of gender-diversity within socialization, yet again of the marginalization/tokenization in academia of trans experiences as subjects for research when the premise of normality and definitions of friendship are clearly set in a cis-binary context, perspective, and understanding. Most of the "benefits" listed are merely coping mechanisms of survival (social assimilation) while the "barriers" experienced with "cisgender and heterosexual friends" are still too similar to the violent microaggressions we face from the general cisgender public of majority/normality... So now I ask myself, is befriending the status quo worth the pains of mental marginalization ? Can the isolation of experiences be justified for the sakes of connection through socio-political/economical convenience ? Allies don't need to be friends but do friends need to be allies ?

          "Why I don't have friends" is a statement of challenge I propose to the public as I strongly believe that we have yet to understand what friendships are and have the potentials to be. And yet I must not neglect of the work that came before: the attempts of revolutionizing gendered relations and the strives towards intimacy beyond labels. I also have to give credit to the love and continuous (un)learning from allies around, even if I have not personally gotten the support that I need at times. "An opportunity to educate about [my] transgender experience" is not a benefit to me, but rather a labour of tokenization as it furthers the segregation of gendered experiences. Vidhya Rajput is "a transgender activist [who] has emerged as a leader in a gathering rights revolution in India but she still has an 'ache for love'" (2019). I wish to softly manifest her essence across the globe, sister to sister, my oceans rising passionately to her powerful moonlight: a declaration of how her "loneliness keeps [her] going"... As our loneliness keeps us going, fighting, and dreaming.

Research/Article References:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0959353514526218
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/world/asia/india-transgender.html