Denarii Monroe

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.

Some people will need more scaffolding to tackle their problems. Others, like some plants, are best left mostly alone and will eventually flourish on their own. You have to gauge a person’s needs and meet them where they are.

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.

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.

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.

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

[W]hy must the acknowledgment of my beauty be predicated on how well and how often I contort to attempt to fit into some kind of ideal? Why can’t I be all the iterations of me and still be beautiful?

As storytellers, disabled writers have thousands of stories inside of us, some related to our disabilities and some not. Some of us are lucky enough to have some sort of outlet for our words — in public and/or private spaces — while others still struggle to find the voice that lives within.

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.”