HerStry publishes one Personal Essay every Wednesday. Weekly Personal Essays are a way for writers to tell the stories they want to tell. There are no rules. No themes. Nothing is off limits. For essay submissions check out our guidelines.
Taking the stage as a drag queen is ultimately what influenced me to dominate in the dungeon. Transformation, among many other facets, is what connects the two. However, I can positively say that I do not change as a person when I embody either archetype; I simply reveal parts of myself that are not always accessible.
Read More“You want me to put that where?” was my first response when my pelvic floor therapist handed me a three-inch piece of plastic connected to a cord, which she plugged into a computer. It was a sensor used to measure muscle strength that we were going to use to test out my vagina muscles. “Ohhhh…kay, well here goes nothing.”
Read MoreThe heavy wooden sailboat bobs aimlessly in the crystal coldness of the lake. Once again, the wind that propelled us down the lake two hours before has deserted us for our return trip.
Read MoreWhen I was a teenager, I learned from a Chinese calendar placemat in a restaurant that my birth year made me a rat. I was on a hot date in China Palace with Keith, my then-boyfriend-now-husband, and there it was, plain as day, on the placemat…I even moved the bottle of soy sauce to make sure I was reading it correctly and it was indeed clear: 1984, Rat.
Read MoreThat late-February day I checked me and the triplets into labor and delivery, it snowed six or seven inches, the world outside our room on the high-risk floor like a green screen, blank and full of possibility. Chad and I paid little attention to it—to its icy chill and constant shower of white—once we were inside the clinical ten-by-ten square room where we’d become parents.
Read MoreI grew up watching my mother and grandmother cook, internalizing how they yellowed the rice, when to taste the broth. I took their lessons with me to college, and charmed my first boyfriend with homemade chicken stews and lasagnas. When I turned twenty-five, the box of wonders in my head tipped over, spilling out erratic energy.
Read MoreWe leave behind our new house in America just as the weather turns cooler. An Airbnb on the Malvern Hills, a few miles from the city where I grew up, will be our base for the next three months. The bedroom faces a Victorian graveyard, the tombstones are cracked and sunken. Everything is covered in dead leaves and moss, the lives beneath forgotten.
Read MoreWhen I was younger my mom called me Skinny Minnie. I’m not sure what she meant by this or why she called me it, but I know that I was confused. Even at a young age, I thought it was weird to have a nickname revolving around my weight -- especially because I wasn’t even particularly skinny; I was completely average.
Read MoreAll the colors I most cherish drifted by as I floated down the Grand Canal. Rich but worn shades of orange, pink, golden yellow and blues meandered by, one after another.
Read MoreI’m always sweating. I get on the subway—I’m sweating. I clock in at work—I’m sweating. I’m asking the server where the bathroom is—and woohoo, I’m sweating.
Read MoreSuddenly desperate to push beyond yourself, you commit to give back in some way in-between all the blood donations. A catalyst to thrust you from your daily grind.
Read MoreYou want to return to the womb. Maybe then everything will be quiet and safe again. But of course, you think about the children. The people, all of them, alone in their homes and schools and prisons and countries.
Read MoreThis was where my family had recently settled after we became refugees for a second time during the 1974 war. On the 13th, one day before I departed for the US for my higher education under a private sponsorship, I packed my suitcase. Then, I carefully selected a few photographs of my family and of myself to take with me to America. The same day I was packing, my mother gave me a few gifts. These gifts became my most valued possessions, and I am proud to say I still have them.
Read MoreIn Starvation Mode, all I thought or dreamt about was food, even though eating terrified me more than anything. I didn’t care about anyone or anything except losing weight. It was like the line between human and animal had become so thin it collapsed. I was gone. I was starving. I was addicted to starving myself. I went feral for a little while.
Read MoreI began losing my eyesight when I was three – a result of poor genetics and squinting at the television too often. My sight worsened until I was nineteen; by then, I was nearly legally blind and opted to have my vision corrected through surgery. Until that point, losing my eyesight afforded me both a gift and a curse – the gift of insight and the curse of knowledge. I saw the world in layers of truths and half-truths, of what people thought they knew and what actually happened behind closed doors.
Read MoreI was a tall, skinny blond, a migrant from a sorority house in Texas, looking younger than my twenty-two years when I moved to Aspen, Colorado. The family of my long-time boyfriend had included me on their ski vacations for several holiday seasons, so when I dropped out of college in my senior year it was the only place I knew to go.
Read More“Thirty-five and still alive.”
“Thirty-six and just won’t quit.”
“Thirty-seven and not yet in Heaven.”
Each year, before watching her children blow out her birthday candles, my mother coins a new tagline to affirm her survival despite increasingly improbable odds. She is terminally ill. Multiple Sclerosis and resultant lung failure.
Read MoreLike many eccentric children, I had often wished I could be afflicted with some kind of physical ailment, imperfection or secret status—something that would make me unique and special.
Read MoreAnother woman in the shop, an older woman—bleach-blonde hair, worn face—regards me: “You look great, honey.”
I had longed for this moment—for decades, really. Ever since age thirteen, when I first began throwing away my school lunches and going to soccer practice, doing suicides—up and down the field, up and down the field, touch the goal line once again—on an empty stomach.
Read MoreI was not raped by someone you know. Just a few days after my fifteenth birthday I was raped by a boy who was scared of ghosts and hung a tin cross on his wall. When I was raped it felt like drowning. I could not breathe. My body twisted in ways I was not in control of, and in the fleeting moments when I realized and re-realized what was happening to me I gasped for air. I cried.
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