Agnostic Zetetic

“There is, in fact, no safeword for chemical burns under one’s fingernails.”

“Fighting makes us feel alive, until it kills us. If it doesn’t kill us, the pain of sitting alone with ourselves, quietly, under constant assault by our own thoughts and memories of war can easily be enough to make us wish we’d died in battle instead.”

“THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS LIKE HIM. THIS BODY IS ACCEPTABLE — PUBESCENT, AWKWARD, MARRED. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE INVISIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOOD ENOUGH. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR BODIES.”

“If you’re lying to everyone you know, including yourself, at every possible turn, is a little upheaval really the worst that could happen to your life right now?”

“We’re all just people making decisions and accepting consequences as we march toward an impending and inevitable death.”

“May we each find in ourselves the courage we forgot we have, to see the beauty we forgot is inside us, while battling the demons we forgot we can slay, on a battlefield we forgot we can win.”

“If I die on my way to the dance, it will be better than to survive having never lifted my feet.”

“Even with the very best of intentions, even with the ambition of making the world a better place, when we cast judgment upon people whose lifestyles, beliefs, or predilections we dislike, we add to the emotional filth of hostility and make the world feel a little less safe for the folks we’re genuinely trying to help.”

“It’s the process of being minimized, invalidated, silenced. It’s the process of being subjected to whatever someone else thinks I owe them. It’s the process of being used, examined, explored, and thrown away. It’s the process of being convinced to comply with the orders of someone who does not see me as their equal, someone who sees nothing wrong with the notion that I’m somehow lesser than they are. Rape isn’t about sex; it’s about all those other things. It’s about power.”

“I could go into their reality any time I chose to, but they could never come into mine. This is what I called 'helping' them.”

“There is a certain loveliness, I think, to performing deep cleaning in one’s underwear on a beautiful summer day.”

“If it’s convenient to love you, you’re lying to someone about who you are or what you need.”

“My body is a political battlefield.It is a place of war, of death and suffering, of triumph and victory, of damage and repair, of blood and tears and sweat.It is a place where memories go to find purpose for their existence.It is a place where humans cast all inhibitions aside to discover what exists at their very core.It is a place of growth wearing a mask of destruction.It is a challenge, not for the faint of heart, beckoning us to face it with eyes wide open.The only war is within. When you are ready to fight it, the field awaits.”

“Most days, I’ve got this impermanence thing down just great. It doesn’t bother me; what’s to bother? Most days, I sit comfortably with the knowledge that I’ll die alone, and I feel nothing so strongly as my embrace of my nothingness. Most days don’t really matter, because there is only this day, and right now I feel like fear is all I am. I don’t want you to leave. Just let me pretend you won’t.'He wrapped his arms around me and we slept. For that night, we would last forever.”

“What you call 'contradiction' I call 'complement'.”

“Relinquishing control to another person is like death: it’s only scary until it finally happens.”

“Let’s be very clear about this, asshole: I’ve been a woman in Arkansas. I know damn well what it means when a man says to me 'Calm down.' Being raped comes next, and that’s a fact I’m never going to forget.”

“We’re not broken. We’re not in the wrong bodies. We’re not inadequate. We’re not lesser. We’re not unwanted. We’re not fraudulent. We’re not undesirable. That’s all just a set of lies we tell to soothe the experience of the prisons we put ourselves in.”

“Should' assumes that when either willingness or ability is lacking, it may be compensated for by an abundance of the other. This is simply not realistic.”

“All I’m saying is that I want you to be happy. I don’t care how it happens, or what it takes to facilitate it. I don’t care if it happens with me or without me. I don’t care if you use me to get there, or if I’m entirely irrelevant to your process. None of me is attached to how your happiness happens; I care only that it does.”