There are stories that I tell that make my listener feel uncomfortable. It doesn't matter how progressive they think they are, everyone has taboos. If not taboos, then boundaries. If not boundaries, then places inside themselves where they would rather not look. My stories often resonate with such places.

I am a person who has always talked too much about my own trauma. I feel compelled to with a force like blood pumping. That is to say, unconsciously, rhythmically, reliably. I have catalogued the critiques and wondered if they might be true. I can't let go. I'm bitter. I can't move on. People don't know how to respond. People will worry. It makes your family look bad. It isn't respectful. And so on.

But I tell these stories for one reason: they are mine. In all of the confusion that I have lived through, I have had to fight for the right to speak with honesty about what I have experienced. And I know that it makes people uncomfortable. Living through it was uncomfortable. But it happened and I'm still here.

I know it makes people I love look bad. It might even make me look bad for loving people with such great flaws, for holding onto them so long. But if they were worried about the stories I would tell, they could have chosen differently. They could have chosen better. I didn't write the story, I am only reading it off of the page. And I will continue reading because it reminds me that those things happened, finished, and yet I remain. In many cases, the relationship with the person remains. I was a victim and now I am more.

Love marches over the bombed out spaces of my heart and teaches me that resurrection is possible. Renewal is all but inevitable. Remaking yourself is a skill you can learn.

I know no one who has escaped trauma. When I think of that, I am made sober. Trauma is everywhere but the silence around it is thick. Vulnerability is not valued. I am trying to give an example of how you make it through without losing yourself, without compromising, and without apologizing for surviving. I haven't finished learning, but this is not something you can master without practice which is to say without some failure.