Denarii Monroe

I’ve never had any serious issues with past roommates, whether they’ve been friends, family, or someone I found on Craigslist or something. I consider myself really lucky in that way; I know there are horror stories out there. But, having lived with my mom for almost a year now, I’ve realized just how much of a burden it can really be.

It had never occurred to me to visit [a Planned Parenthood].... And yet, in a culture where the rights and healthcare needs of people assigned female at birth are constantly under attack, it’s easy, even for someone like me, to have warped ideas about exactly what one will experience.

Honoring my feelings and being true to myself are just as important to me as being critical of the ways that a multiply-oppressive society manifests itself in the way I date, love, and desire.

My therapist of six months — let’s call her L — was letting me go. It was so subtle that I wasn’t even sure what was happening; I had to ask.

I did not leave that theater the same way I arrived. It was then, as I walked back to my building and looked up at the night sky, that I knew. I thought to myself, “I want to make movies.”

Does becoming an adult mean you have to give up "childish" things like paralyzing crushes on celebrities? Denarii Monroe thinks not.

It’s like being a deer in the headlights. You’re in imminent danger. You know it. But you can’t move. You can’t speak. No reaction whatsoever. You just stand or sit there, frozen in time, waiting for the crash.

And when you're multiply marginalized and know how much work there is to be done in the struggle for liberation, how few people are doing it, and that our lives literally depend on it, it can feel like you’re letting your people down.

Activism can seem intimidating, all the more so for those with accessibility issues of various kinds. There are myriad numbers of disabilities which can affect how we can (or can’t) engage in activism.

In a culture focused on the importance and superiority of romantic attraction and relationships — a culture aromantics might call alloromantic-centric — platonic friendships (another form of relationship) are consistently undervalued.