👀 those hands can only belong to one samurai….

I don’t have any answers. I cannot provide hope. But I can provide an example that those like me aren’t alone - and that’s at least something.

I share this for those struggling who don’t need that extra burden of, ”but you should just love yourself.” It’s no better than telling depressed people to just not feel depressed.

I don’t share this for you.

I’ll never forget the conversations of shared shame. Maybe there are those who do love themselves - but there’s additional shame in having shame at all. Logically there’s nothing to feel ashamed of but the world doesn’t work logically. Judge me for not loving myself, that’s ok.

I can’t pretend I do this with full confidence or self-acceptance. How lonely it is to suffer. How lonlier it is to suffer in ways no one else seems to.

I lost my 3rd queer friend.

How dare I hold back and rob some other man, equally as pained and lonely and shamed, of seeing his traits treated as beautiful or worth celebrating?

Feeling disgusting within my own skin. I wish to be a traditionally masculine man. To see myself reflected in a character I love equally reviles and validates me. How dare I ruin a treasured character with the traits of myself that make me wish to vomit and claw my flesh off?

In some traditions, death gives you one final dance before you depart the world.

When faced with hopelessness and agony, I will take that last dance. I shall shrug the weight the world has placed on my shoulders, wave away the shackles on my wrists, and stomp my feet upon the earth in vengance.

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