Being cut open is not new for me — this is the third time I’ve done it. It hurts every time, of course, but the level of agony varies depending on the day, surgery, sensation, and context.

The first time I went under was for my left shoulder. It was my nondominant side, but the surgery was arguably five years overdue. I injured it at nineteen, doing a flip turn in the pool. I felt my shoulder pop out of its socket and then violently snap back in. And while I was careful not to re-injure it at first, in the subsequent years, I would take up CrossFit, snowboarding, and pole dancing — all of which caused my shoulder to partially dislocate over and over again.

By the time I had it looked at, my labrum was torn over 80% around and filled with cysts. I knew surgery would be painful, but because I was used to living in near-constant pain, I felt prepared. I was not. The first time I took off my sling to shower and felt the weight of my arm, I screamed and almost fainted.

My second shoulder surgery was much more tolerable physically, but it introduced me to a new facet of anguish. If aches and exhaustion do not consume you, your mind will consume itself. Until you must experience it firsthand, you cannot imagine being dropped back into your exact life with one less extremity. While worthless for two-handed tasks, I learned to occupy my legs on long hikes in my neighborhood. I spent hours outside in the woods or picking up sticks in the yard with one hand.

So many hours, in fact, that my hips began to falter. At this point, I was convinced that I was broken. Would it always be like this? Going from one joint to the next, spending my years in and out of hospitals and physical therapy offices? My hips had been bothering me for over a decade by this point. If five years of neglect led to weeks of howling pain in shoulder recovery, what would ten years of neglect mean? Is it possible this recovery would be worse?

It was, and it continues to be. A surgeon broke my pelvis and realigned the bone with three hand-sized screws to preserve my current hip while creating an acetabulum that would hold my femur in place. I was born with dysplasia, but it went undetected until I was nearly thirty years old. Too young for a hip replacement, but too old to allow further injury or risk early arthritis.

I spent the night in the hospital for this surgery. I would have stayed longer if I could have. Every move I made was torture. Adjusting myself, sitting up, lying down, getting out of bed, using the restroom — all of it evoked at minimum a grimace, on average a whimper, at worst a scream.

After I was discharged from the hospital, I found comfort only in fitful, drug-induced slumber. Weeks passed, and I was still unable to balance medication side effects with pain management successfully. Opioids made me violently ill, but without them, I could not bear to be awake.

It wasn’t until the month mark that I began to feel like myself again. I write to you now at nearly six weeks post-op. It’s October, which happens to be Disability Awareness Month and features National Coming Out Day. I’ve previously acknowledged the role these holidays play in my own life, but with nowhere to go, I find myself contemplating their relationship to each other and my relationship to them.

While I currently use a mobility aid, I struggle to label myself as “disabled.” As a society, we think of disability as a binary and permanent state. You are disabled, or you aren’t. Once you’re disabled, you always will be. Such is not the case for me. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that impacts my entire body and can be blamed for all of my surgeries and maladies, even those that date back to childhood. Aside from being built like Humpty Dumpty, I also have dysautonomia, a condition where the nervous system struggles to regulate itself. Dizziness, nausea, brain fog, headaches, sweating, shivering, fainting, and fatigue are all symptoms I battle regularly. I’ve even experienced cerebral spinal fluid leaks that presented with stroke-like symptoms and landed me in the ER.

And yet — I do not deal with these things every day. My walker and crutches will not last forever. My shoulder slings are retired. Am I disabled? Is there such a thing as an intermittent disability? I think of my friends whose diagnoses impact them from the moment they wake to the moment they sleep, and I feel ashamed for comparing myself. But, I feel much more camaraderie with them than I do with my healthy, able-bodied friends who do not understand why I have canceled so many plans at the last-minute.

My disability presents in the same way my queerness does: silently. When I am out in public, I look healthy. My relationships appear heteronormative. But behind closed doors, I have struggled to bathe, walk, and eat, and I have loved people of all genders and sexualities. To be seen as you are is terrifying. To be seen as you aren’t is confusing and isolating.

I am privileged to experience the duality of these identities. To commiserate with those sharing similar ailments on one day, and to go to a bar and laugh with healthy friends on another. To find community with other queer folks, but to “fit in” with straight couples, my husband by my side. My queerness is forever, and my diagnoses will last a lifetime, but their impact ebbs and flows through my life.

Before my hip surgery, I had not experienced what it was like to be so obviously perceived as “disabled.” Using a walker and crutches while sporting a hip brace that started at my sternum and ended at my knee magnetized pitious eyes to me. The bolder ones ask, What happened?

It reminds me of when I shaved my head shortly after coming out as bisexual.

My neighbors were used to my long, blonde locks, made-up face, and nice clothes. Jaws dropped when they saw me for the first time without a mask. Some suspected I had cancer. Why else would a conventionally attractive, presumably straight, white girl have a buzzcut? It was something I always wanted to do — shave my head to raise money for children’s cancer research in honor of a cousin who passed. But secretly, I also did it to crack open the door for others to see my queerness clearly, should they choose to look.

I went on to dye my hair, experiment with face piercings and tattoos. Being unapologetically myself was the queerest thing I knew how to do, but when I did, people treated me differently. It was during this time that I started to feel distant from the concept of “womanhood.” When my girlfriends would introduce me to their girlfriends, they would preface my haircut by saying, “This is Sam, she shaved her head for childhood cancer,” as though that explained why they would be friends with someone who looked like me.

The truth is, I grew up feeling like an outsider to girlhood. I didn’t play with makeup, instead I played “Barbie Extreme Sports” where I would give my dolls mohawks and launch them out of windows. I didn’t participate in girl scouts — in fact, the first people who bullied me were girl scouts. I gravitated toward basketball shorts, rap music, and being “different.” I never thought much of my “one of the boys” mentality until adulthood, when I began to question whether this attitude could be attributed to my gender, sexuality, personality, or simply a male-centric worldview.

The transition to adulthood was confusing. What is a girl? What is a woman? Is it the way you dress? The way you talk? The things you like? Is it none of those things? Is it the way you are treated by men? The way you are treated by your peers? Surely, it’s more complicated than our anatomy. If I don’t intrinsically know what it means to be a woman, how could I be one myself? During the pandemic, I started reflecting on my relationship to gender. I changed my pronouns to “she/they” when I realized that I felt more like a person than I did a woman. I was just me, Sam.

I don’t have any answers to these questions, by the way. Interestingly enough, as nebulously as I define my gender and ability level, they are two of the identities with which I relate the strongest. My queerness and my EDS follow me into every room I enter, whether or not they announce themselves.

When I first came out in 2018, I feared how I would be perceived. While most of my friends were unsurprised, unbothered, or both, my parents were displeased that I announced my sexuality so publicly (read: on Twitter). The comment that stood out was, “How could you do this to our family?”

I fear the same scrutiny now, as this piece risks outing me as “disabled.” So much of my self-worth and identity as an adult is rooted in feeling resilient or desirable. While growing up I strove for perfectionism, as an adult I determined that the antidote to my flaws was learning to overcome them. I won’t be overcoming a genetic disorder. As my weight fluctuates with my ability level and my body continues to develop new scars, I feel less desirable than ever. Rather than accept defeat that I have not grown into the “woman” or person that I thought I would be, I choose to reevaluate my criteria for success. I refuse to ostracize the parts of myself that most feel like home. At thirty years old, I would rather be terrified and perceived as I am than lonely from being perceived as I’m not. My ever-evolving identity no longer feels like a failure — it’s just proof to me that I am alive.

Closed eyes. With one swift movement, you
Lift 2,000 pounds above your head

Applause, ladies and gentlemen!
A single bead of sweat drips down
your temple —

Noticeable only to those with their pupils
dilating, fixated on you.

How steady his hands are! Truly amazing!
Slow footsteps and
Your head is on your pillow
Feet can finally rest alongside
The cinder blocks on your chest
(they need their sleep too)

You insist you are fine, but I worry
Sometimes about your breathing

He has broken the world record!

It’s as though the red fern
Grows in your heart
Across the bridge to Terabithia

Applause for our new champion!

You are everyone’s keeper.
The fault is in your stars
And I wish I were your feet
Instead of another dumbbell
Or even another fan.

Droughts are just as dangerous as floods
I’m not an artist, I just like holes in my body
And daydreaming of ink in my veins
Circling in charcoal patterns my father once drew
With strong hands. We shared the old studio.

I’m not emotional, I just like the electric color of red eyes
And showering in the dark with someone else’s
Voice echoing my thoughts in the background
Until steam bleeds the ink and fills my lungs to the top.

Evaporate, condensate, fall from the sky
My very own breath drenches my body and rolls
Shamefully down my cheeks. But I am formless and
Shapeless and there is only one way to empty my mind

Your eyes are my cup, my bottle, my teapot

I drip
And crash.

But never once touched the ground

Sally pondered missed signs, but I stopped her right there.
I saw my dearest with others, beaming like the sun
But never did I question if I was her one — no just or
fair warning could have lessened the stun.

My cherished didn’t cheat, but she never chose me.
Her thoughts far away as she would rock me to sleep,
Her tone frigid and cutting when pain made me weep.

But still I believed my mother was mine to keep.
I never smelled perfume on my freshly washed sheets
But there was a day I learned my house wasn’t safe for me
That the chest I wept in would drown my heart at sea
And the face I loved was no longer trustworthy.

When Jennette McCurdy first announced her one-woman play “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” I knew I had to see it. Thanks to COVID, I could not. A few months later, I heard she was publishing a book under the same title, and I immediately preordered it.

While it’s true I was a fan of Sam Puckett, Jennette’s acting resumé is not what drew me to this book — the title was. I had never heard someone publicly claim the sour sentiment that so often snaked around my mind. And while my mom was (and still is) alive, I have spent much time imagining what life would be like without her. I was very young when she started giving me firm reminders of her mortality in the form of, “You’ll miss me when I’m gone,” and “I wish my mom were still alive,” and “I’m getting old. My mom died at 50; I could die anytime now.”

And then I became a teenager, and as all teenagers do, I dreamed about my life without my parents breathing down my neck. My mother was very strict with me; I didn’t go to parties, I seldom had access to a cell phone, and my thoughts and opinions were generally unwelcome should they not echo the family dogma. I fantasized about going to college where I could fully embrace the human experience. But before college came, my dad was given six months to live.

While he, too, still breathes (miraculously), by the time I turned 20, I felt like a Philosopher of Death. I had mourned uncles, cousins, aunts, and now pre-mourned both of my parents. But the thought of my mom’s death felt different from the thought or reality of any other. She was the woman who raised me. She cleaned my cuts and bought my clothes, but she also made no secret of the fact that her children ruined her life.

Let me be clear: I do not want my mom to die. I experience great anxiety over the fact that I genuinely do not know how I will feel when she inevitably dies. I love my mother and deeply cherish all she has taught me, but the reality is that no one on this planet has ever or will ever hurt me the way my mom has.

This is what brought me to Jennette. After reading her memoir, I was both deeply moved and disappointed. Her story wasn’t like mine. I assumed that having an overbearing mother with narcissistic tendencies was a universal experience, and I was looking for someone to verbalize everything I felt as a child. Page after page, I dug through her words, desperately seeking validation and needing to find myself in the book. Sometimes I did, but mostly I didn’t.

It’s been a few years since then. I’ve gone to therapy, I’ve taken Prozac, and I’ve turned 30. Subconsciously, I believed that these things would push my relationship with my mother into the background, and I could move on from it all. But I can’t.

I find a stain on my T-shirt and remember how she would threaten to throw away all of my clothes except for one outfit if I didn’t learn to take care of my things. I see a pair of black heels and remember the shoe she threw at the ceiling while yelling, “This should be your face.” I see a yellow school bus and remember missing mine in the ninth grade, but she had a gym class, so I was dropped off in a parking lot near the YMCA and told to figure it out.

Our relationship has evolved since then, but not toward healing. I set boundaries that work for me, but I desperately crave connection. She is my mother, after all. Yet, years of trying to win her approval took a toll. It wasn’t her fault — she simply could not give me the type of unconditional love I needed. She couldn’t even give that to herself.

So now, I am left with all of this. I have accepted that my relationship with my mother is not the one I wanted, and it will never bring me closure or peace. My story is not unique—I have bonded with many who have similarly complicated relationships with their parents. But as a society, we don’t openly discuss this. I understand why.

Writing this, I fear condemnation from my loved ones. I fear my mother’s anger, or worse, her sense of betrayal. I fear being misunderstood. My mom tried her best, and I do not and cannot fault her for this — but it doesn’t lessen the pain.

As an adult, I know these feelings are only mine to own. My mother is no longer responsible for my well-being, my sense of self, my happiness, or my hurt. In many ways, this is liberating. But on some days, I am acutely aware of how much of myself I stifled for her and how much of myself I created to please. It’s difficult to acknowledge the prison I built and live in, and it’s even more difficult to find a way out.

This is what I’m attempting to do. Why in such a public forum? I’m not sure. Part of me feels that voicing my thoughts will make them harder to deny. All of me hopes that someone will find themselves in these words.

I once had a therapist who compared me to the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” who shouted to the crowd, “He’s naked!” For better or worse, I think she’s right. I have always felt the need to name what is in front of me, hoping that someone else sees it, too. It fills me with shame that even as a fully grown woman, I seek validation compulsively. That, after over a decade of therapy, I still doubt my memories, fight my feelings, until someone else lends credence to them.

It may seem that this is what I’m doing now, but I see it differently. There will be parents who read this and hate me for it. After all, I open this piece by saying the title “I’m Glad My Mom Died” really hit home for me, and my mom is still fucking alive. There will be children who lost their parents who hate me for the same reason.

But this is me claiming what’s mine. The complicated relationship between mother and daughter is seldom acknowledged in such a plain and ugly way, but I’m willing to do it. There is no happy ending here. There is no “We took a break, and now everything is much better than before.” There will be no healing relationship between my mother and my child that paints over my childhood, because I won’t be having children.

There is just this. Take it, or leave it. And should you choose to leave it, please realize the power you hold in doing so. I never had that opportunity.

Thanks to a newly juicy ass and the promise of attending a state school in the fall, my confidence blossomed and my mouth explored the angles my tongue could make with another. Saliva became a familiar taste, but I was acutely aware that my palate was not accustomed to more sophisticated, full-body flavor profiles.

My entire childhood was centered around getting to this point: going to A Good School and Not Fucking Up. Now I was playing catch-up on typical teenage experiences, and I only had a few months to fill in four years of Suburban Party Culture before I drowned in a sea of experts in the fall.

Luckily for me, my mom was beginning to loosen her tentacle grip, a sure indication that she was proud of me; I attended my first high school party, in fact, with her blessing at the ripe age of seventeen. I was palpably nervous. My friend Fiona picked me up from my house, and as excited as I was, I was more terrified of outing myself as a fraud. Fiona and I were not close, so her presence wasn’t much comfort. Although we were both on the outskirts, she was by far more integrated into the group of people at this party than I was. They hung out together regularly, or so it seemed. Their parents were always belly-laughing together, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to reference places or faces I hadn’t been privy to.

It wasn’t just me who was the outsider; my whole family seemed to be an arm’s length away from the group. Although we were all part of the same community, there was something glowingly different about us, and it wasn’t just the blonde hair. My mom was the best at pretending. Aside from physically fitting in more than the rest of us could ever hope to, she could riff with the best of them and make jokes that delighted all. She volunteered at events that The Community deemed important. My sister and I always reluctantly and involuntarily accompanied, trudging our feet, trying our best to smile at people who made us uncomfortable.

So I knew who to expect at this party, just well enough to know they wouldn’t be expecting me. But I was invited and permitted to attend, a lightning strike situation I couldn’t pass up. I knew I would feel like an invader; I always did, but I also knew how to feign comfort well by now.

I can’t remember if any parents were home, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

What I do remember are sticky red cups, the taste of chlorine, the smell of body odor and artificial cherry. Everyone talked so loudly that I didn’t know how to interject, much less if I should. I waited in the hot tub tuning my ears from one conversation, to the rush of water pouring into the pool, to another, like a radio going through a small town. I bopped my head along to what was sure to be a song I hated when George approached me.

I probably knew George marginally better than the rest of them, but only by coincidence. We interacted at Events we were forced to attend, and he was easy to talk to. We made fun of each other, and he was younger, so it felt safe to be myself. I never cared much about what younger kids thought of me because at that time, an added year of life experience increased your wisdom exponentially.

As he floated closer to me in the hot tub, lowering his voice and slowly exploring how to most casually touch my skin, I wondered if all the jokes he had made over the years were for this moment. Because he wanted something more than a laugh or banter or company, because he played the long game.

Bubbly, artificial lime seeped into my mouth as I slowly swallowed whatever concoction I had acquired. The taste of alcohol repulsed me, but I knew it was time to get used to it. George and most everyone were already a few drinks deep. It seemed as though my cup was setting off a siren indicating how full it was, so I choked it down to avoid scrutiny. I looked at George. He wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t cute either. He reminded me of a mouse. Right as I made that comparison, his patchy, furry face leaned into mine.

I was ready for this moment, thanks to a policy I created at a young age to never refuse a kiss. With dozens of lips in my sexual Rolodex, I was sure to be a good kisser, or at the very least, not the worst. George was giggly and inched closer, petting my hair. Having my hair stroked was one of my only fond childhood memories; my mom would gently pat the underside of my bubby head in the tub when I was young. George’s hand seared the sweetness of the gesture right off. I pulled my head away, feeling disoriented, stung, and flattered all at once. We eventually got out of the hot tub, and I don’t remember what else happened before It did.

I suppose he could have spent a few more minutes, maybe even an hour, cajoling me into a state of comfort. I doubt I finished my red cup. I might have spent time flirting or giggling. I was good at this; making people laugh made me feel good, and making them feel good made me feel better. People had called me a “tease” time and time again, and as much as it bothered me, I pretended I didn’t, because I was a “cool girl.” I regularly was endeared to others, but no one interested me enough to warrant them truly knowing me.

George was getting forceful, a side of him I had never seen before this night. His slight figure became increasingly menacing as I realized I had procured a second shadow. Fiona was ready to go, and I pounced at the opportunity to close my Performance of a Lifetime before I fucked it up. Someone asked me to stay. I shrugged, laughed, and flitted away into the room where I left my bag and shoes.

My announced departure wasn’t enough to shake the shadow. It followed me into the bedroom where I left my things. It locked the door behind us. It grew a face and wild eyes and pushed me onto the bed, then forced its way inside.

Cold, wet, and terrified, I eventually let out a “no.” Another. Another. After several interjections, the shadow hoarsely whispered, “Are you sure?” as it continued to cram itself into me quickly and violently. I saw parts of the shadow I had never intended to see. Eventually, the wild eyes locked with mine, wide and vulnerable.

The shadow moved. Tried to kiss me goodnight. I suppose it couldn’t have ridden home in the car with me and Fiona, but I felt haunted deep into the evening and days to come. I sat awake in my bed with all of my clothes and the lights on. My mother knew something had happened, but she didn’t dare pry it out of me, for what it could mean about the Community she raised me in.

At the time, I was confused and uneasy about what this evening meant. Surely, this is what I had wanted all along. To fit in, to have shadows clawing at the door for a chance with me, to feel my skin flushed with the touch of another.

But it didn’t feel right. I convinced myself it was because of the mousey face, or the damp and crowded setting, or perhaps it was a piece of my sexuality I didn’t understand. After all, I had spent years twirling out of the very circumstance I found myself in the night prior. Was my inexperience to my detriment? Did my nerves get the best of me?

Two years later, I’d find my answer on a generic, HR-created slideshow. I’d feel this night in my stomach and realize its hold on my throat. The twisted, death grip inside me could only mean one thing: the shadow had left a piece of itself behind. Hollowing darkness would continue to feed on my insides for years to come, and many times I would go so far as to tear parts of myself off and hand-feed the monster with care.

George knew what he left me with. Soon after I recognized the darkness inside me, he sent me a Facebook message to apologize in vague and unincriminating words. The apology made the monster grow stronger — it only confirmed my experience, and therefore the tangible horror of what was left behind in my body.

I wouldn’t cut the beast out of myself for years to come. I consciously fed it more with each suitor I invited to my bed. The shadow may have created a monster, but I’d protect it as my own, even as it feasted on my organs and haunted my bed.

This story isn’t about the shadow or the monster or even myself. It’s about a fear so all-consuming that I’d ruin myself rather than acknowledge my past. It’s about exorcism and a healing process far more painful than the wound itself.

Firm hands grow softer still.
A footstep fades to dust.
Roaring thunder silenced
by its maker (or fate).

I can only watch
Listen
Weep.

My palms itch for the past.
Today the fire dims before me.
We are damp and frigid,
Holding tight as the wind howls on
(vigor endless like time)
Fighting the imminent.

I yearn for old heartbreak.
My wails and river of
Tears a quaint pond next to
The deep abyss ahead.

I can only squeeze
tightly
and remember

their big, booming laughter.
Dad’s sneezes, multiples of three,
Mom’s hair, thick and velvet,
bacon on the grill and letters
from Santa and Lingo,
and boisterous, all-consuming love.