The Inability to Throw Up

I'm Sorry for the Title

It’s been taking a while for me to get back into the habit of writing but I feel like I’m back. I’ve been hard at work at my book and I’m bursting with ideas for my substack, IG, our new upcoming podcast, and a a business newsletter that the Resonance is pushing in the new year. Creative energy galore!

Family Slice

My friend just lent me her copy of Pageboy by Elliot Page. I’ve always been curious about that book and at the same time wondered what a celebrity like Elliot Page and I could have in common. I knew he was going through some serious trauma, as do all of us trans folks, but I didn’t expect our stories to be so similar. Perhaps it’s because both of us came out later in life and dealt with the struggles that come with that.

When I say there’s overlap, there’s this particular story that stood out. Elliot describes how he didn’t throw up for 17 years straight between the age of 11 and 28. I was an especially struck by what seemed to be an E-Coli incident when he was 16 and he didn’t throw up but instead laid on the bathroom floor on the small hand towel that all bathrooms have “fading in and out of reality.”

This story is so poignant to me because I too have an inability to throw up. Whenever I would get wasted when I was younger I would just lay super still on the cold bathroom floor hoping that that the feeling would go away, which it always did. I just remember one terrible incident when I was around 18 or 19 years old and I was at a party and the hosts asked me what I wanted to drink. I said juice and they gave me Apfelkorn. To those uninitiated it’s cheap apple liquor and it tastes just like apple juice. From the moment I had my first sip I knew it was alcoholic but it was just a little bit too easy to drink. I lived in this small town called Enkhuizen in the Netherlands and the stores on the main street aren’t open in the evenings except when it’s “koopavond” which means once a week the stores stay open until 9PM. I remember falling on my knees in the middle of the shopping street full of eager shoppers. I threw up everywhere. I yelled to God in desperation and swore that I would never ever drink again if he (which is what I called God at the time) would just make it stop. The feeling didn’t stop, and the embarrassment didn’t stop either. I feel asleep on the couch of a friend and in my sleep I kicked over his big screen tv. Only in the mid 90s a big screen tv is massive tube tv. The tv survived but my ego didn’t and I felt like I was sinking through the floor as my friend’s mom, with a sarcastic laugh, said “did you sleep well?”

I rarely threw up ever since that incident. There is something guttural that doesn’t sit well with me. Maybe it’s how my body feels so out of control. Maybe it reminds me too much of certain abuse I faced as a child…

Two years or so ago I was in South Bend, Indiana and I went to this hipster food court that had amazing restaurants that bring food to your table after ordering a collection from whatever restaurant is available. I was feeling brothy and ordered a large portion of Ramen. One of the ingredients turned out to be infected with e-coli and my three day visit to my friend, whom I call the Bullwinkle, turned into an absolute nightmare. I knew that this virus needed to get out of my system but my body rejected throwing up. I just couldn’t do it and for the first day or so I just kept it in but unfortunately it didn’t go away and I felt much worse the next day. Eventually I had to stick my fingers in my throat to force myself to throw up and the memories from that moment are patchy.

I dissociated pretty hard. I remember Kim trying to find a doctor for me but no one was available. I remember begging Kim to just stop at a hotel so I could lay down. I remember being in the back seat of Bullwinkle’s truck. The next thing I remember is being at my in laws sleeping it off. I dissociated so intently that I had to be pushed in a wheelchair through the Indianapolis airport and apparently I looked absolutely catatonic.

Reading Elliot Page’s story, I never imagined that other trans folks had gone through the same. To be honest, three and a half years after coming out I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of how dysphoria has affected my life and the lives of the people around me.

This Week’s Special & The Crust of the Matter

At this point you can’t be surprised when you hear that I’m a bridge builder. I understand that bridge building is not for everyone. It always involves marginalized people walking halfways to meet the other party and you know what? That kinda sucks. There are many moments where I just want to feel bad for myself. Trans folks have been politicized so much in the last decade and whenever I speak up I get shot down, being accused of using my identity to advance a cause. You know what, I am using my identity to advance a cause - I’m walking towards bigots trying to make them see that I’m not scary.

But it’s not just conservatives that I’m getting pushback from. Last year I’ve gotten more hate than ever from my team; progressives on the left. While I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a progressive leftist I do consider those “my people” because historically they have been the first to speak up and make me feel protected. Unfortunately though, it seems like some of them have also used my identity to advance their agenda and I don’t think I’m alright with that.

I would consider the opposite of bridge building, vitriol. While I do believe vitriol can be cathartic and therefore a helpful tool to release stress, I also believe that too much vitriol causes polarization which has the opposite effect of what we want to achieve.

I have my collection of pet peeves when it comes to this but I’ll leave it with an analogy for now: what if you get a phone call from your child’s principal and you find out that they’ve been bullying someone in their class. How would you respond to them? Would you yell at them showing your intolerance of the injustice they have committed? Or would you explain to them that this is not what we embody? Now take this analogy and apply it to someone else who bullies your child, or your best friend. Yes, I understand that there’s anger and distrust and we should embrace those feelings but yelling at a bully will never make them stop.

To take this a step further - one of my interlocutors Chelsea Long posted the other day asking: what if loving your enemy meant refusing to “flatten anyone.” The reason why this is so important is this: people “flatten” me too. They have turned me into a catch all of all things evil. They call me delusional, satan, a blasphemer, an abomination, a predator, and often also a pedophile. It’s very easy to hate all of the above. When you start to take the humanity away from people, you risk turning them into sub-humans. This is the same tactic that colonizers have used during colonization.

One day in 1621 Jan Pieterszoon Coen killed and enslaved nearly all of the 15,000 inhabitants of the Banda Islands. He was able to do that because he was able to turn the perception of the Indonesian people into sub-humans. When someone stops being a human, it’s easy to hate them and kill or enslave them in the process.

The point Chelsea is making is important because by giving in to vitriol we also give in to the true enemy in our nation which is polarization. It’s a system that conspires to pit you against each other. It demands that we view the people who voted for Trump as evil, as crazy, as sub-human. Any cause, no matter how progressive or noble, that turns a people group into sub-humans is evil.

Bytes

Oh my everything! Sometimes I watch a movie and it’s so impressive that I can’t stop thinking about it. This happened, for example, with the first two parts of the new version of Dune. Like how can movies with a comparable budget feel so bland and have such a thin story line? I just couldn’t stop thinking about the magnitude of the cinematography, the use of wide angle shots to express grandeur, the ambiguous storyline that is mind shattering. Why can’t other movies, of the same budget, do that? Why do they waste my time? (I know, I’m super judgmental right now lol)

I feel the exact same way about one of my favorite movies “Your Name.”

I just can’t unsee the beauty of this movie. Of course, the story is amazing but the animation is on a completely different scale.

Your Name is one of those rare animated movies where the creators spend extra time and details on what I like to call “nonsense shots.” Of course they’re not non-sense nor do they fail to deliver but they don’t necessarily add to the advancement of the story. They’re timelapses of the sun rising and setting, doors opening, or just majestic landscapes.

The story is already amazing by itself but that extra attention to details just makes me so emotional.

I know everyone is all about Wicked and Moana 2 right now but please, please make space in your schedule to watch this once in a lifetime gem 😭

Pie to Go

🤶🏼 If you’re not from America you'd be surprised how serious they take Christmas here. During the holiday months, besides light tours and the mandatory apple cider when cutting your own Christmas tree, there are also pop-up cafes. Essentially bars and cafes that change their name, menu, and appearance to celebrate Christmas. When I moved here I thought that America was a bit exaggerated but now I’m all in!

🍺 I like PBR, hate me, I’m not ashamed of it.

🏳️‍🌈 I’ll be giving a workshop at Queer Christian Fellowship in Atlanta next month! If you’re in the area, come say hi and support the great people at QCF. I’ll post details soon (no spoiler alert, because it’s about ambiguity, duh)