This is not My Blog

This isn’t my blog.

It isn’t my name.

I’m not sure I like that, but I am sure that it’s necessary. We’ve come a long way since I was a kid, when my mothers had to pretend to be good friends in order to stand a chance at being respected entrepreneurs and pedagogs. I used to have to grit my teeth against the barrage of homosexual slurs, and now I can hold my girlfriend’s hand in public and people tell me we look sweet.

But we’ve still got a long way to go. I still hear people telling me that I look good for a curvy girl, ’cause that last addendum was truly necessary. I still hear people with depression or anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder told to buck up and push on as though simple willpower were the only thing that separated them from the “normal”, “healthy” people. As though we wouldn’t love to be less agitated if only it were that simple.

I’ve seen people describe their eating disorders, and heard them met with praise. I’ve been asked what the harm is in being anorexic, if I never really got too thin. I’ve seen food addiction treated as a moral lapse instead of a real problem, and day after day I see people denigrated and dismissed on the basis of their appearance alone.

I live with that – I’ve got no choice but to live with that – and I’ll fight my fight and add my name to the right causes … but that’s not what this is. This blog, this space, is a place where I can be real. Melodramatic, hyperbolic, happy, furious, self-loathing, arrogant, real. A place to say the things I’m not sure if I dare say. A place to wonder the things I don’t yet know. I’ll make mistakes, and I’ll make discoveries, and if I’m really lucky I’ll make friends, but I don’t think this is a place to make a name for myself.

Not my real name, anyway.

Not in this world, not yet.

To be honest, this is more of a space filler than something of substance anyway, but I figured if I was going to start somewhere, it might as well be with honestly.

So, now I have a new blog, and a new name, and a new post.

Let the games begin!

-xO. Kenzie H.