When my I was in Maine this last visit my grandfather gave me a photo of my grandmother, it was faded and yellow from sitting in their window for over thirty years. In the picture my grandmother is in Egypt riding a camel. As a child I would carry this photo with me to bed, b/c it was a CAMEL and my grandmother. We had no zoos in Maine just cows ;) I believed my grandmother was the bravest person alive for this one act and I remember telling her so. I also remember her telling me, how frighten she was, how high up it was, the man dropping the rope, hitting the camel’s ass and leaving her on her own. She didn’t get anywhere fast, she didn’t know what she was doing.

My grandmother was my age when her 8 year old was hit by a car and killed. She was also pregnant at the time and trauma caused her to loose her other baby daughter. When I grew, I always wanted to talk to her about these events b/c they were tragic, somehow a part of my history and I loved stories. I remember asking her about how she could live, why she just didn’t wither and die; she told me air continued to go into her lungs, air continued to leave---you breathe.

I understand. Truth: I love well and I don’t. I am a woman with things I can’t change and things I can. I was/am broken, I jumped, I shattered. I made different choices and I tried to start again. Another fact: I am a thirty-eight year old woman with two children and I’m a gay writer. I haven’t turned into anything anyone expected me to be—I am continuing to change. I don’t fit in a box but I can be labeled. But it is not all of who I am.

When I left my husband, told my family everything; my grandfather said, but you were her favorite. I understand. I have come too far to be afraid, too stay little. I have come too far to be defined. I have a nest of my own making. I am done hiding. I am done letting others determine my own truth.

Now I can begin.