my gender is my race is my gender

shuffling between family dinners & queer parties, disparate spaces & paradigms, where often it feels like all the indian people are cis & all the queer people are white. the collapse of history & language & memory that engenders this moment. the relentless & exhaustive ritual of asserting that we have always been — to the white queers who call their genders new, and the indians who call heteronormativity home. but i know my gender is my race is my gender is my family is my queers is my soiled makeup wipes in the car on the way to my mother is my lipstick, fecund, ready to bloom on the way back.

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perfection is loneliness

i am ignorant & superficial & sentimental (& that is my intelligence). i am insecure & needy & scared (& that is my strength). i am confused & contradictory & chaotic (& that is my truth). i am imperfect & irrational & insufficient (& that is my beauty). i do not know who i am. i do not know what i am doing. but what i do know is that i am honest. which means what i do know is that i need you. which means what i do know is i don’t want to be perfect because that would mean i didn’t need you. what i do know is i don’t want to be perfect because that would mean i didn’t need you. 

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alternatives to "you're beautiful"

things to say to femmes after we tell you about being harassed that are not “you are beautiful”

1) i am sorry that this world punishes you for existing.
2) this is unjust & unacceptable.
3) i will fight for you.
4) what support can i provide you with right now?
5) here is what i can do right now:
6) i will do my best to combat (trans)misogyny everywhere
7) this is not your fault
8) this is not about your appearance, it’s about their hatred.
9) you do not have to endure this alone.
10) how are you getting to your next destination? can i support you in getting there?
11) i will try my best to make you feel safe.
12) i am here to vent, cry, process, strategize, hold you.
13) you shouldn’t have to change what you look like in order to be safe.
14) you are so much more than your body.
15) you are so much more than your body.

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things to say to a struggling friend instead of "you're strong"

1) you don’t have to be strong with me.
2) your fragility is sacred. thank you for sharing it with me.
3) what do you need?
4) i will hold you until the end of the world (& even after that).
5) how can i help?
6) here is how i can support right now _______
7) i will still love you no matter how things end up.
8) i am here. there. wherever you need me to be.
9) everything you are feeling is valid.
10) you are not a burden or inconvenience.
11) you don’t have to go through this alone.
12) i am because you are. ❤️

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2018 Resolutions

1) rediscover symphony in the silence. solitude is not loneliness.
2) insist on reciprocity. leave when unrequited. (even when it hurts).
3) your heart is infinite, but your body is not. this is not a limitation, it is a gift.
4) in a world hellbent on destruction, do not just critique. create! create! create!
5) respect/love/affirm/celebrate/desire/defend femininity.
6) resist rhetorical inclusion. dream beyond binaries. assert your multitudes.
7) need everyone harder. there are no strangers, just potential friends.
8) recognize your worth and your pain beyond their ability to be aestheticized.
9) apocalypse is not inevitable. fight for the people that you are and the people that you love.
10) their ugly is your beauty. their messy is your magnificent. their broken is your becoming.
11) grieve it all. everything deserves a funeral.

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bad byes

i have always been bad at goodbyes. by which i mean my dad gets mad at me for hanging up the phone too fast & i never know when’s a “good time” to leave. i can’t do goodbyes because what can be good about missing you? i do bad byes. my friends ask to see me before i go, and i always have excuses & promises instead. i am sorry you didn’t know i was leaving (again). i am sorry there was no dinner, no sendoff, no farewell. because how am i supposed to fare well without you? i believe trains & planes are for crying, by which i mean trains & planes are ways of getting somewhere. sometimes i get to the airport early & just sit there watching people leave each other & cry. want to hug everyone & just say i am sorry, i understand. this is all a scam. we shouldn’t have to leave each other. ever! “bye” makes me remember that time is real & things end. i struggle with inevitable things. i want to believe in forever. i want to stand in the ocean & tell the waves they cannot take me! i want to go on the streets & tell the men they cannot hurt me! i want to fall in love & tell the heart it cannot break me! i want to believe that time is a circle here to hug us even closer & closer together until we remember that we were never apart. i am deeply nostalgic. i miss everyone & everything, even the people i haven’t met yet. i cry using the same bathroom at the same train station from last year because “remember when.” i like memories more than anything because my mind is a movie theater & can make anything beautiful. chances are i like you more from afar. chances are we remember things differently. sometimes i make soundtracks for my life & on the plane — leaving you — i think about how this would be a season finale, this would be an end of a chapter, this would be the scene they won’t forget. i am scared most of being forgotten. so i leave abruptly. i disappear. i leave you wanting more. i leave you wanting. i leave you. i leave. i...

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drowning

i am constantly devastated by a world where the things that are most dear and important to us are the things we cannot talk about in public, where healing isn’t something we have space to do collectively, where people care more about our personal brands than our real lives! i always forget to drink enough water and take my vitamins and protect my boundaries and i have always needed other people’s help to keep myself alive which goes to say i am so hurt by a world that believes in individuals as if we can do any of this alone. i believe we are all constellations of stories, i believe that when you want to scream and you aren’t allowed to the scream doesn’t go away it eats you inside, i believe that almost everyone i have ever met is lonely, sad, and feels undesirable and most of all i believe that’s not our fault! most of the time it feels like i’m drowning surrounded by people who have perfected the art of erasing themselves for other people’s comfort and there are so few moments when i am allowed to be expansive and weird and...me! and i believe one of the most important things we can do right now is bear witness to one another’s pain and give permission to one another to experiment, transgress, become. and i want to spend the rest of my life doing that work: for myself and for you, for us.

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small talk

it’s not that i don’t do small talk, it’s that I can’t do small talk. i’m the girl that they ask, “how are you?” & i am like: “missing everyone i ever loved, constantly hurt by the callousness of a world that reduces me to a body, and mourning the loss of everything i could have been — how about you?” i don’t know how to function in a world that believes in strangers. i need everyone’s help for directions: both on how to get where i am going and on how to process heartbreak. heartbreak not from a person, not as a moment, but as a condition, from the world. i am messy, inconsistent, naive, earnest, too much. or rather i am honest in a world that lies. i don’t know how to compartmentalize myself, give digestible narratives, don’t know how to play pretend. i am difficult to chew on, so most people just spit me out. i think every person i meet could be my best friend. it’s not that i didn’t grow up it’s that I realized that growing up was a sham. i believe in the power of temper tantrums and slumber parties. i love everyone and everything so much that it tears me apart, because most of the time it is unreciprocated. when they ask me how are you? i want to say “UNRECIPROCATED!” and it’s not your fault but i don’t know who to blame. how do you incriminate a condition? i experience past, present, future at the same time. i wore Velcro sneakers until like 13 because i couldn’t learn how to tie my shoes. i don’t know how to make decisions alone — the last coat i bought i texted 15 friends to ask if it was “me,” maybe it’s because “i” only exist because of “you” which is why i cannot do small talk. because i need your help to be. because i need to ask you how we got “here,” and by here i mean everyone going home alone at night, and by here i mean, privatized intimacy, a subscription you have to pay for. and by here i mean “this,” this wanting to know you but settling instead to know the words you say about yourself, as if language is all that we are. i believe that we are more than language. i believe that we are related beyond blood. I believe that i need you and therefore i love you. i need you, and therefore i love you.

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our natural state is water

hello my name is alok and i believe that feelings are real and that gender is not. i believe that loneliness is an international state of emergency. i believe that crying in public is political. i believe everyone in the world is mourning the disconnect between who they are and who they pretend to be. i believe that performing is the closest i have ever come to being honest. i believe that i am weak and scared and confused and i believe that is ok. i believe that everyone in the world needs someone to have hot chocolate/mango laasi/coffee (your choice) and just talk about it. i don't know what "it" is but I believe it haunts you like it does me. i believe it has the capacity to unravel you at the seams. i believe we want to fall apart because water is our most natural state. i believe in falling apart routinely -- every once in a while. like a forest burns and a heart bends, i believe in breaking down just to see what was waiting there underneath.

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you are worth more than your trauma

just a reminder that you are worth more than the summation of your trauma. that you have an essential value and dignity simply and irrevocably because you exist. that even though almost every institution and hand and word has been forged precisely for the purpose of teaching insignificance, you are significant. and i may not have the language for it right now but both the impossibility of your resilience and the deep and profound respect i feel for you (let’s call it love for the sake of coherence) suggest that there is something operating at a level that we have not been taught to register (or perhaps have been schooled to forget). so i commit myself to your entirety in all of its strangeness and contradiction because every time i bear witness to you i want to devote my entire life to searching for that which will help you remember all of the ways you were already sacred.

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friendship is romance

i want a world where friendship is appreciated as a form of romance. i want a world where when people ask if we are seeing anyone we can list the names of all of our best friends and no one will bat an eyelid. i want monuments and holidays and certificates and ceremonies to commemorate friendship. i want a world that doesn't require us to be in a sexual/romantic partnership to be seen as mature (let alone complete). i want a movement that fights for all forms of relationships, not just the sexual ones. i want thousands of songs and movies and poems about the intimacy between friends. i want a world where our worth isn't linked to our desireability, our security to our monogamy, our family to our biology.

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