Another Birthday Reflection

(Originally published on Substack on July 17, 2025)

"My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.” -Audre Lorde

I have not written much of anything since shortly after the election last year. The tradition of writing reflections on my birthday seems as good a time as any to try once again to post a piece of writing.

For me, birthdays invite introspection. Not because I must be self-centered, but because they are so ordinary and arbitrary. The earth had been traversing around the sun long before I occupied it, and for that matter will likely continue long after it becomes hostile to all life, so to be a passenger “making trips” in orbit around our local star is hardly unique or even very interesting. I’m just along for a ride that I was never asked if I wanted to be on anyway.

I am 33 today. This age has always felt intimidating. Although the bible itself never mentions the age of Jesus (not that I believe it’s anywhere close to being a factual account), there’s a cultural mythology around the idea that he was crucified at the age of 33.

For so much of my life, this age has seemed distant. Old, even, to the child who was both afraid of and curious about my own martyrdom. Jesus got to live more life than I’d known before he was killed. He didn’t preach for very long, according to accepted tradition, before his death.

Part of me is disgusted that I am still so deeply affected by something I no longer believe to be the truth. Another part of me cannot neglect to mention this dark part of my past and present.

Ah, trauma: the gift that keeps on giving. As a reward for surviving horrors, life continues to struggle to survive, now haunted by memories of those horrors.

The concoction of experiences I’ve had, with the way I’ve done my best to cope, are a gigantic knot that seems impossible to untangle. Each strand loosened tightens another.

Speaking up about my trauma over ten years ago had impacts that I could not have predicted. I stand by the fact that I told the truth. It was the Jesus of the bible that said “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free,” but this was not my experience. I told the truth with total naivete. It was used against me in hundreds of ways. Predators got a whiff of my blood because I did not conceal my wounds.

I wanted to tell my story. I wanted to be understood, to connect. Alas, my connection to the outside world was from within a fishbowl. And what is a fish in a bowl to those outside of it, except entertainment? I did not know how to get to know people. What followed was the lopsided parasocial connection that follows so many of us who’ve poured ourselves out on the internet to be consumed.

I received many kind messages from people. They said things like “What I went through wasn’t as extreme as what you experienced, but your writing spoke to me.”

In time, I would realize that, although hopefully well-intentioned, these people were not seeing me as a complex person, but as a broken thing to compare themselves to. They perceived themselves as not as broken as I. This comparison made them feel better about themselves.

I promised myself and everyone else that I would write a book about my experiences. And I tried very hard to do that. But every attempt threatened my very will to live. Those traumatic experiences were so painful that recollecting the details sent me into spirals I struggled to recover from.

Writing was how I attempted to reach out. Writing became a way to stay afloat. Writing was also threatening to drown me.

Capitalism is the rule of exploit: whatever costs the least and delivers the most profits receives the investors. The exploited are exploited repeatedly. Get exploited and abused as a child in the entertainment industry, then twenty years later, you can get exploited again as you try to tell your story in a tell-all memoir or documentary. These courageous attempts to speak up became clickbait. They did not serve to halt the abuse itself.

And people would click, gathering in the comment sections to ogle us like animals in zoos. They wanted perfect conclusions. Success stories. Tell us you survived and you’re better now. Nobody wants to see a “victim mindset,” after all. They want to be reassured that the worst is over, and that real life has happy endings.

Finally, I stopped trying. I did what seemed impossibly selfish: I began to take care of myself. This was a last resort. My first abusers, my parents, were already behind me. But another predator took advantage of my woundedness, and I was in an abusive relationship for the last five years of my twenties.

For the past year, I’ve been doing my best to just take care of myself. I see my therapist twice a week. I go to physical therapy twice a week. I see doctors and specialists for my physical illnesses and chronic pain. I take my medications for my pain and my mental illnesses and to help me manage my ADHD. My recovery has been slow, but I understand that no quick fix lasts.

I wish I could say that in the end, writing my story brought the healing and connection I sought. My anger and devastation did not allow me to think clearly about what would happen if I told the truth to anyone who would listen. Telling the truth was not freeing, because it was no way to establish the community and support I so desperately needed. It was a way to make myself into a spectacle. Observers would see my pain and feel briefly entertained in some way, perhaps even reassured.

Some connections did last. I am grateful for those who are close to me now. My partner is so supportive. The people who support me financially have been amazing. I still keep up with many people I met through writing, who do appreciate what I have to say. These people have been supportive, and have steadily encouraged me to take care of myself since before I knew how. I am still learning how.

For these past several months, I have been recalibrating. Working on myself. Going to appointments. Learning everything all over, including how to properly eat and sleep. I did not do these things for an audience. I did them for me. This feels strange, even now. It is also a paradox to write about it for others to see now.

On the Internet, we feel seen by each other without actually seeing each other at all.

In the end, our screens are more often mirrors than windows.