Hi, it’s me, its Q: thanks for being.

I’ve had an about me blurb here for years. I have always hated it. I have never been able to get it right. Instead, accept my offering of a series of things-i-wrote that encapsulate: me. Expect many revisions😉♊.

She

If you’re gonna call me she please do it radically. Don’t box me in with it. Don’t paint me woman with it. Don’t imagine me some boring ass caricature you’ve pieced and put together from every sitcom and magazine you’ve come across. I am not the stereotypes. I am not the other people you call she. I am not your mother, your sister, your ex girlfriend. I am not the helpless heroine waiting around to be saved. I am no damsel in distress and I am no princess waiting around for some prince. I am not some quivering babe that will come and go at your beck and call. I am not your property. You are not entitled to me. Call me she if you must but know that there is a gap between all the things you think come with that and everything that comes with me. Call me whatever you want. I’m still gon’ be who I be.

Listen,
you a wonder.
You a city
of a woman.
you got a geography
of your own.
Listen,
somebody need a
map
to understand you.
Somebody need
directions
to move around you.
Listen,
woman,
you not a no
place
anonymous
girl;
mister with his
hands on you
he got his hands on
some
damn
body!
– Lucille Clifton

My Guides

I have 3 spirit guides that inspire me to create: Audre Lorde, Freddie Mercury and Prince. 

It is from Lorde I draw my drive to push others to face their hidden truths and to face my own. From her I learned the importance of feeling and intuition, of deep soul work, and of unconditionally loving on those we name “different” from ourselves.

 Freddie Mercury was an unexpected discovery. I went to see the Bohemian Rhapsody film on a whim with a friend. I knew nothing about QUEEN prior to seeing that film; I’d just been to enough karaoke nights to know all the words to Bohemian Rhapsody, the song. 

I cried for at least half of that film. The entire time I was watching I BECAME Freddie Mercury. I understood him. I felt him. I was always the weird queer kid. I was always the one my parents yelled at, and worried about. I was the one that never did anything quite the way they wanted. I was the rule breaker, the flamboyant, glitter incarnate big dreaming wild child. The things I loved most and was good at were belittled and deemed insignificant. I just understood Freddie. His life, and his story reminded me of the importance of trusting your gut no matter what. He reminded me that the craziest option is sometimes the best one. He reminded me that the best you can be is your whole goddamn self and that if people cannot stomach it: oh motherfucking well. To somebody somewhere you are a goddamn dream. To somebody somewhere you are an inspiration. To somebody somewhere you are a reason to keep on living. 

What I love about Prince is that he didn’t give a fuck about gender. The symbol he chose to signify his name is an obvious mesh of the symbols commonly used to represent female and male. The way he eschewed identity politics with his fashion and even his style of music is my main inspiration from him. He reminds me that it is possible to transcend personal identity categorization. He reminds me that I really can do and be and call myself whatever I want. He reminds me that as much as others may box me in with their labels, I am not required to play along and shrink and categorize myself. 

When I feel utterly small and boring and like I could never possibly do anything of magnitude or meaning I turn to these 3. They were odd like me. There were oppressed like me. They were told they were things they were not like me. They struggled like me. They had people that did not believe in them like me. They were just people with big hurts and pains that used all of that energy to pursue their even bigger dreams. They took all their trauma and used it to paint the world a little more beautiful. That right there, is love. 

Who?

Sometimes I look at pictures of myself and I can’t quite recognize my face.
Like;
who is in there?

How many other faces have mixed and merged together to create mine?
Whose stories exist untold in my bones?
What is it that I am made of?
Am I stardust or am I blood and sinew?
Am I a dream or am I a solid thing?
Can dreams be solid too?
If I am stardust where did I live before I showed up here?
What Galaxy did I belong to?
Did I call a place home?
Did I know what a home was?