#i am categorically the fucking opposite of a lesbian get away from me

[ooglywooglies]

actually literally unrelated but it pisses me off when people who call themselves lesbians like my selfies/show interest in me like i dont care what your labels mean to you but i dont like the implications of that for my own sake

[thotfuss]

I kind of agree with the other Annonymous writer, I have both your ex and your feed. She apologizes for the things she did wrong and never says a bad word about you. She fully admits to things. It does feel wrong to keep calling her out as an abuser because she has been getting targeted and crucified because of your words. Is that not just as bad really? Friends and family, of course, will always take your side ALWAYS. You should listen to your heart. I am sure you loved her once.

I’ll be honest, I wrote a really angry stream of consciousness response to this, deleted it, considered not answering this at all, wrote out an actual response, told myself I didn’t owe it to anyone to explain, deleted that, and then wrote it again. Maybe this is my fault for talking about it or referencing it on here, but I never used her url or name, and I never went into detail. I saw it as me using my own blog to express my feelings, which, maybe I shouldn’t have. So I’m sorry if that’s the case. i was never “calling her out,” simply expressing my own feelings on my personal blog, i’m sorry if that was irresponsible. But I am not okay with the messages I’ve been getting lately. This is one of...5 similar ones sitting in my inbox rn? So I am NOT answering this to put my ex on blast or to target and crucify her, and I DON’T owe this explanation to anyone but for my own peace of mind I’m going to explain! (under a read more for abuse tw)

First of all, even if she DID admit to things she did wrong and apologizes for them, it doesn’t make it...not abuse? I seriously doubt she’s getting targeted and crucified, I haven’t posted her URL on here, haven’t even used her NAME, and her family and friends were extremely supportive of her and her actions when all this was happening.

It took me MONTHS to even be able to consider labeling what happened as abuse. Even after my therapist, my family, my friends, EVERYONE who knew about even a FRACTION of what was going on, had said that it was categorically emotional abuse I still felt like i was exaggerating or asking for attention. and to be honest, I still feel like that! 

My ex was insecure. I wrote everything that happened off as her being insecure for SO long, because every time I brought up an issue she would say I “wasn’t supporting her,” and that I should “know how it felt” because of my own issues with mental illness. But when I look back at some of the things that happened-I went to visit my sister back in September, and when I told my ex, she threatened to break up with me if I went. She also threatened to break up with me after my sister gave me a string bracelet she’d made me before leaving for college, because my ex thought that if I put it on, I’d be “replacing her.” I wasn’t allowed to hang out with my family in any capacity unless she was there. I wasn’t allowed to have other friends, I wasn’t even allowed to spend time by myself. She got angry if I spent time on homework, if I went home to do laundry, even if I wanted to sleep. She would say I’d rather sleep than spend time with her, so I was averaging 5 hours of sleep on a GOOD night. she lived about 30 minutes away from me, and I work a lot of night shifts. 

I would often go home before going to her place to change, feed my frog, etc, and she would get FURIOUS over this. She forced me to keep my location services on at all times, despite my telling her that it made me incredibly anxious and paranoid. If she saw me at my parents’ house, my apartment, the store, ANYWHERE without me having told her that I was going there, she would call me until I picked up and explained. 

She forced me to put her fingerprint into my phone so that she could go through my phone whenever she wanted. When I expressed discomfort, I was told both by her and her mother (who genuinely thought everything I’m outlining was an okay way to treat someone, which made it really hard for ME to tell that it wasn’t because I was surrounded on all sides by people telling me the opposite) that if I didn’t have anything to hide, it shouldn’t be an issue. She read through old chats of mine, and got upset about things I’d said to people before I’d even MET her-telling my friends I loved them, etc. She would monitor my social media activity, and if I was active somewhere and hadn’t messaged her back in a few minutes, she would call me repeatedly until I picked up. If I didn’t pick up immediately-If I was in class, at work, asleep, etc, she would later cite that as a reason she couldn’t trust me.  There was one morning where I woke up and she had turned my alarm off, and was on my phone scrolling through my phone calls and asking why I had called a certain number the day before but hadn't called her (I had called my dentist's office to reschedule an appointment.) While I was at work, she texted me calling me a fucking asshole and a cheater, based off of this situation alone.

I’m an art major, and I draw a lot! I like drawing portraits, I’ll sketch people in class, etc, and when she saw that she would accuse me of being in love with the nameless stranger I’d sketched in the coffee shop or something. She told me that the figure drawing class I was taking was “basically cheating,” to the point that I dropped out of it. She would go through my sketchbook constantly, which is something that’s very personal to me and I told her this. She once again cited that if I didn’t have anything to hide, it should be fine. She got angry at me for drawing fictional characters, even guys, which. I’m a lesbian! But she would get jealous and have a meltdown. 

She CONSTANTLY accused me of looking at other girls in public, even though I truly never was. I was driving us home from somewhere once, and looked in my sideview mirror to merge lanes, and she thought I was checking out the girl who was walking by on the sidewalk and blew up at me. Multiple times, she would get upset at me while we were driving somewhere and try to jump out of my moving car over an issue such as the one I just mentioned. 

She would get mad when I wore makeup to class or work, or even dresses or nice clothes. I would tell her that I just LIKED that dress, or that I just enjoyed doing makeup, and she would say I was only doing it to ‘impress other girls.’ On the other hand, she got upset several times when I DIDN’T wear makeup when we went out, because she said I wasn’t making an effort for her. 

She got upset at me when I didn’t finish meals, which she said triggered her own issues. I explained several times that my own anxiety (not food-related, just general) messed with my appetite a LOT, and made it hard for me to eat sometimes. 

She also gets mad when I don't finish my food, and stuff like that. I get that that's because of her eating disorder, obviously, but she still takes it out on me. All of this, when I react defensively or show that I'm hurt by her accusations, she says that i'm not giving her the "reassurance" she needs.

When I brought any of this up, she would have a melt down and cite her insecurities and mental health issues. I have major anxiety and depression issues, I've been hospitalized for it before and go to therapy once a week and am also on a lot of medication for it. When I had depressive episodes, bad days, or anxiety attacks, she would often get mad at me, and said I was sulking, or she said that it must mean I didn’t love her because she didn’t make me happy enough. I usually ended up comforting her over it.

On the anxiety note, I also tend to break out in a rash on my chest and neck when I'm anxious, and I will clarify that this looks NOTHING like hickeys. My neck gets red and blotchy, and I get itchy. when this happens, she LOST it every time without fail, melting down and telling me over and over "stop lying! just tell me who it was who did you do this with," etc, etc.

She told me that if we broke up, she would probably let her own mental health issues get worse, and would stop eating all together. She also flat out LIED about this when I brought it up later, saying that I was the one who had threatened to hurt myself if we broke up. She told me this, and other people this, and made up similar stories, so much that I started to believe it. I was apologizing for my own existence by the end of it, for every word out of my mouth, I was going crazy. I didn’t even REALIZE how bad it was, until I mentioned to my sister that I hadn’t driven the 30 mins over to her house one night due to the bad weather, and she had called me and called me until I picked up, forced me to send her pictures of the roads(?) and then said she’d “rather have someone who would drive on bad roads for her.” This wasn’t even near the worst thing that had happened, but the fact that my sister CRIED over that made me take a step or two back. And I left. Like...a few weeks after that. and it was HARD, it was the hardest thing I”ve EVER had to do, because i GENUINELY thought I was condemning someone to die. Like she fucked me up that bad! I still feel guilty. But I did it! She told me that nobody else would ever love me like her, that nobody would accept my mental health issues, etc, but guess what! I did it! 

And she STILL tried to contact me, refused to leave me alone, showed up at my WORK with a letter and flowers wanting to work it out (and sure she says this was romantic, whatever, but she forced me to unblock her number and hug her and now cites that as me “still feeling the same”) and made like...several different accounts to message me on here after I kept blocking the new ones she made. 

I have NO idea what she’s saying about me, and I don’t care. I want more than anything to move on. I hope she’s happy, I do! I get really, really, angry about it sometimes and I feel horrible for the way her isolating me made me cut off some very important people in my life. I’m still hurting, but i’m HAPPY. I want to move on, I don’t want this to be who I am, it doesn’t define me and I’d love to move on and meet other people and not have this fucking haunting me! And she keeps finding ways to bring it up. I wish her no ill will, and I”m not saying she’s a bad person. I’m not! But I am entitled to my feelings in the matter, I”m allowed to say that it sucked, I’m ALLOWED to say that it was abuse because there are things that happened that I haven’t even told my therapist, because it’s too hard to think about. I’m allowed to move on. Please, please allow me to move on. 

I’m not going to answer anything else about this, maybe I shouldn’t have talked about it in any capacity on here, maybe that’s my fault. But please stop messaging me about it. 

[theletterformallyknownasq]

Miski - October 13th, 2018

Me: October 13th, 2018. Sitting down with Miski Noor. First question is how did you receive your name. Miski: How did I receive my name? It's interesting. When I was cooking in my mom's uterus, the story that she's told me is my father wanted to name me, and he got with his brothers and they wanted him to name me Canab, which is actually the Somali word for "grapes." And my mom was like, "nah, you're not going to name my first born - my first daughter - grapes.” *laughs* So my mom decided to name me Miski. My whole name is actually Arabic. And Miski is the Arabic word for "Scent of Jannah" which is "heaven". And my whole name is actually Miski Ali Noor. So, Miski is scent of heaven. Ali is the masculine version of Aaliyah, which means most exalted one. And Noor is one of Allah's 99 names and means "Light of God." So my full name is ‘Scent of Heaven Most Exalted Light of God.’

Me: That's beautiful. Miski: Somali comes from "Somaal", which means “go milk”; go milk the camels, go milk the goats, etc. We were actually a nomadic people and traveled with herds of animals wherever to get our needs met. That's where we come from. And so even now being immigrant and migrant, we‘re still nomadic, we've always been traveling across fake ass borders that weren't there because that's just how humanity works, you know? Me: Oh my god. *laughs* I'm just thinking of this transcription app and how it’s definitely not going to recognize how to write out your name. It's extremely racist. Not to deviate from your answer, tying this back in. The only accents it recognizes is English - North American English, European English, whatever English. And then the available accents are - and this is incredible - French, German, Russian, and then European Spanish. And that's it. Miski: You're not super surprised right? Me: Nah, but there's no way I can transcribe your full name -  Miski: I could probably write it down for you. Me: True! Because it's so beautiful. There's nothing in my set of vocabulary or knowledge that I know that can articulate your name, which is like speaking to the lack of power the english language holds. [It] has “so” much power until it's intimidated by something it doesn't recognize. Miski: I mean, it's so limited and I'm not surprised when we think about white supremacy and how this world fails us. Like, what does it want to know. One of Nayyirah Waheed poems was like "you have one word for love. I have seven in my language." You know what I mean? Your skinny language can't even come close to holding the abundance of people outside of it. So, English is limiting because white supremacy is limiting and can't even possibly come close to encompassing all that we are and all that we have and all that we've even been before it all existed. Even in choosing my tattoos. The first tattoo I wanted was something that was hella Black, hella African, and I got an Adrinka symbol because I wanted Somali, but I didn't want English characters on my skin. So I got an Adrinka symbol, because that's the closest I could come to what I was searching for.

Me: And that helps with leading up to the next question. How do you identify? Pronouns et al? Miski: The way I like to move through the world is I like to use They/Them primarily and She/Her occasionally. I like a 70/30 split, and if people can't hold that, I ask them to just use They. But for the last three to six months, no matter what space I'm in, whether it's random strangers on the street or all Black intentional movement space, I'm hearing way too much “She.” And so I've been in this space of feeling like people can't hold the distinction that I want, so I'm just going to force them to just use They. I identify as a Queer, gender nonconforming femme. I identified as a woman for a long time because I didn't know I could identify as anything different. Like, I came into my Queerness later in my life and I think part of it is being a Virgo and not even imagining how anything could be different or seeing anything different.And then when I would think ‘I don't have to own this title of woman, of womanhood, I don't have to,’ it was a freedom that I hadn't known or experienced before. I could just be femme. For me, "woman" isn't just encompassing who I am. Most days, I just think of my gender as "Miski". Sometimes I'm like a fairy, you know? I don't prescribe to gender. It's also limiting to how it feels to me. I associate womanhood with suffering in a way. And it's just this identity of having to serve everybody else, having to be subjugated, having to fit into this particular role, and I've seen how people have reclaimed womanhood, especially Black womanhood. And I love and respect that. But still, even then, it's not me. So yeah. So gender nonconforming femme is where I'm at. Me: Yeah. How does it make you feel when people over-call you "she" pronouns? Miski: There is a pain that I associate with it and erasure and invisibility. And it's painful because my conditioned tendencies, the ways I've learned to move through the world in order to protect myself, are to be invisible. If you can't see me, you can't hurt me. But I'm naming that I don't want to be invisible. I'm naming my gender identity to you and you're still not honoring that. So even when I break out of the ways that I've learned to protect myself, when I say I want to be seen, you're still refusing to see me. There's pain associated with that. Me: Do you share those sentiments with...I don't like this word, or the words used to describe this. Do you feel that way or do people assume you're Black American or assume you're only African? I talked a little bit about that with another subject. Miski: We all get our Blackness questioned, right? Your Blackness is always questioned. Everybody's blackness is questioned. Are you Black enough? Are you too Black? And even questioning where your Blackness comes from. It's just another way of Othering. And another way of being placed into a particular box because Antiblackness is the fabric of this world. But in every single culture, every single nation, religion, people, anti-blackness exists. So I can't get away from my Blackness. And I think, like most Black people in figuring out my identity, that's something I tried to do as a young kid. I remember in the second grade not wanting to go out into the sun in the summer time or on breaks because I didn't want my skin to get any darker. Me: Wow. Yeah. So now we've gotten to the heart of the interview finally. I was gonna incorporate this comment that Charlene [Carruthers] made last week around Blackness being essentially Queer. Queerness being about expansiveness, about talking to the multifaceted elements of Blackness and how it isn't casted as a Beyonce on Rihanna whatever the fuck people think in their heads. So, how do you define Queer and how does that coincide with your definition of your own Blackness and your identity? Miski: For me, I took up Queer because it is all-encompassing. Lesbian feels like a box. Gay feels like a box. Queerness is like whatever the fuck it is to me in this moment and it could shift in the next moment. And I agree with Charlene in that Blackness is Queerness, like Blackness is something that everybody is trying to quantify or qualify or categorize in some sort of a way. Blackness is always being policed. "This is what Black is" and "This is what Black isn't." And to even be able to claim my own Blackness is a way for me to validate myself and my own existence. And for me to say that I'm here and that I'm real and you can't tell me what I am or what I'm going to be. And that my potential and the impossibility of me is not actually not impossible - that it is possible and here I am - here is the manifestation of me. The same way you're saying about the language we are using; English is so limiting. I think Queerness could even be expanded upon. You can't say what Queer is or isn't because I say what it is for me and somebody else's Queerness can be different and that's totally fine because that's what it is. Me: Wow. Now I don’t wanna ask you the other questions because I'm loving the organic conversation we're having right now. Talking to the old way of understanding this umbrella. I thought of Queerness as a prism, where we are just beams of power, casted through this one thing that doesn't really change but consequentially changes us, every time we own who we are. So, what do you like or don't like about the mainstream definition of Queer identity, if there is such a thing?

Miski: Yeah. Even when I say Queer or think about it, there is a particular brand of white Queerness. Who gets to decide what your identity is and how you move through the world? There is a privilege in that. Right? So there's a part of it that we have to come up against, and because of that whiteness, a part of it is reclaiming what Queerness actually is. It's limited. Politically, you have to change what that definition is. There's also us embracing our own power, moving in it where it's not just being in opposition to whatever white Queerness is or how white folks are expressing it. But how we get to stand in our power and own it. That admitting your Queerness is limited because you don't have more of a gender/racial/global analysis on what power is and how it functions in this world. Because Blackness is Queerness, and you're not fulfilling your understanding of it if you don't know how to hold the humanity of Black folks, of immigrant folks, of folks whose humanity isn't honored When this country was founded, you had to be white, male, moneyed and a landowner to be considered a citizen. What are the qualifications for Queerness? How are we dismantling and destroying [the term] so how Black and Brown folks express Queerness is actually the standard? It's not a full Queerness if you're not actually holding us in our humanity. That's just more white supremacy, except you move a little differently than other white supremacists. And you want to be held by the world, but don't want to hold the rest of the world. It's actually us standing in our power and deciding that we get to name this, we get to say what it is, and we get to offer this fuller definition based on the fact that we just fucking exist, we're here and we're real and you have to actually contend with that. Me: Can you expand on how important it is that the world understands us, what Queer identity and culture means? We have all these different things like LGBT. Or LG, at this point. It ends where Trans & Queer folks aren't included. How important is this expansiveness in the way you define ‘Queer’? Not just to liberation of folks like us but for other folks who are at the margins or the fringes of society? Miski: So I feel like when this current iteration of the Black Freedom Movement first popped off, it felt like somebody pressed the GO button for Black liberation. Part of the reason I signed up is because of the analysis of this current movement. The Civil Rights Movement was limited in its ideology in some ways - needing a charismatic male leader, and only one or two, deeming that we can't have a movement without that. This expansion on what it means to be a leader, what it means to be Black, what it means to be a Black Queer feminist, and having the framework of intersectionality that Kimberly Crenshaw has provided has folks finally in practice of that, and that is so incredibly important. One of the things that I heard that has always stuck with me is 'nobody is free until Black Trans women get free'. So when Black Trans women have their full humanity honored, then we are all actually free. And I think that's what is important for people to under­stand. Folks who currently benefit from this system - from the sys­tems of capitalism, transphobia, white supremacy- their humanity is also tied up in this relic. They might think they might be benefiting but they've lost so much of their souls. You have so much of your hu­manity to reclaim because you can't even see my humanity. There is no freedom or liberation without my freedom or liberation, and your full humanity can't be realized and honored truly if I can't be free or liberated in this world.  Adrienne Marie Brown said something around like "One of the most fucked up things about this current world is that we're not even able to imagine the impossible." We just don't question what's possible and we just live with what has already been created.So folks who pre­scribe to the current systems or just move inside of them don't even know how free they could be. They don't even know how much of their humanity is inaccessible to them. Even scientifically we only have access to only 10% of our brains - what is going on with that other 90 percent? What is the magic that we could reclaim? We have more than enough resources, more than enough food, more than enough water to take care of every single human. But instead we put resources into killing people, into exterminating life and so on. And I feel like that's what's at stake. Actual life. What is left for those coming after us? What is the possibility of us? That's what's at stake. 

Miski: Everybody's humanity and life and the possibility of life and existing, breathing, loving one another. Having the freedom and self-determination to make those decisions for ourselves socially and politically and emotionally and physically and so on. Me: Seriously. Thank you for that. I've enjoyed my conversations with the other subjects thus far, I'm still learning, so I'm grateful for you and the others for sharing such intimate and personal perspectives on these topics. But on the other side of the politic - what gives you joy? Miski: Our joy is so fucking important, like, our resilience is actually in our joy. If we can't be joyful, we can't be resilient, we can't live. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the joy and the love that our ancestors had been able to cultivate to even bring us here to be able to be alive. Without joy, we can’t live. And there is a difference between being alive and living. I get joy from the life of my people. Just seeing Black folks existing and loving. You being able to do this project, this brings me joy. I get joy from the success of our folks. I get joy from ratchet music, twerking. I get joy from Afrofuturism and reading dope Black poets and Black people visioning a different future. I get joy from us eating good food and taking care of ourselves and learning how to take better care of ourselves. I get joy when I see us in community with each other because the ways that capitalism wins is by isolating us into individualism and us thinking we don't need each other. When we come against these systems. Even in our movement building, our relationships are our greatest infrastructure. Us building great infrastructure and building great relationships and knowing that I can go to my community to get what I need and don't have to lean on these systems.That brings me joy. All of that makes us resilient so that we can continue to build different worlds for our people, Me: How do you define safe, not safety. Safety feels like an -ism. Miski: So this question feels scary because like when do I actually feel safe Me: Well, that's kind of ironic. Miski: It's hard because I don't feel safe that often. You know? Like at any given moment, especially doing Black liberation work, the state could come banging on my door and, as an immigrant, they can take that shit away. It's so fleeting and it's not guaranteed. So I feel like I'm like in this perpetual state of fear and not knowing I'm scared all the time but I know as a nomad - with borders and nationalism - this shit could be taken away from me at any given moment. But I know at my back, there's all the skills and experiences I have but then also my ancestors are at my back and are flowing through me. So it's actually really arrogant to think I go through anything by myself. I'm never by myself. My community, my people, my ancestors, my skills and my experiences are always with me. And I think when I'm grounded in that, when I'm centered in it, where I come from, where I'm going and where I'm at and who I come from, that is when I feel the most powerful and that is when I feel the most safe - if I ever feel safe. I am not alone. It’s then when I remember that is when I feel safe. I think that's why it feels fleeting, because it depends on me being centered in that knowledge and proclaiming that I am the protagonist of my own story and I'm here - slaying dragons with my people. Me: Last question. If you could address the most influential figures and decision-makers in the state right now, what would you say about improving the standard of living for someone like yourself living in Minnesota? Miski: Get the fuck out of the way. Just get the fuck out of the way. We need the resources. We have the vision. And we will get freer so much quicker if you just let us do the thing. The world has not set you up because of your positionality to be able to get us free. And you have a lot of listening to do, a lot of learning to do, and a lot of power to hand over. You've got the same people running the same organizations for 20 years. It's stagnant because it's the passing of the baton to the same types of people for the most part. Like, it doesn't make any sort of sense and you're not going to get me free. You can't get me free. I can get you free, but you can't get me free unless you are a Black/Queer/Immigrant/Muslim/Femme/Trans person. Most times, you can't even comprehend my existence, so how could you ever validate or make it any easier for me to exist unless you are in conversation with me and you're handing over your power? Yeah, there are folks who are our allies and who are doing work, but it's a constant state of work. As somebody who holds all of these different identities, I have anti-blackness and white supremacy inside of me that I constantly have to work at. As somebody with power and privilege, how much work do you think you have to do? How much of your humanity do you still have to reclaim? How much personal transformation work do you have to do? ‘It is our duty to be transformed in the service of this work,’ like Mary Hooks says. And so you have a lot of work to do and a lot of power to just hand the fuck over if you are actually interested in a world that is capable of holding me. And if you want to play a role in actually getting us to that place. Move, Bitch! Get Out The Way, Bitch, Get Out The Way! Me: Thank you. So much.