I'M POST-JUNO. WHAT R U?

I COULD SLAM POETRY INTO YOUR DEF EARS, JAM SPOKEN WORDS OF YUPPIE YESTERYEARS IN YOUR CARPAL TUNNEL AND YOUR WRITER'S BLOCKADE ON GAZA'S STRIP TEASE FANTASY FOOTBALL. NOT SOCCER. NO AID.

ON SOME SENTIMINENTAL SHIT

I cannot thoroughly express how you guys have touched me. The lovely emails of hope. The warm ims. The formspring messages. The reblogging, and liking of my posts. The phone calls. Thank you for everything. The feeling is mutual. I feel indebted to all of you— both my “irl” friends, and my soon-to-be “irl” friends that are in that coveted middle, transitioning spot from blogging buddies to true friends. I don’t think I’ll even be able to scratch the surface. I hope I don’t forget anyone.

Titwillow - Aguilera - You’re a good guy. You love music. You are moved by the music, and I think music is what will propel you to cinema stardom. I see you directing Lady Gaga videos in the future —or videos of equal brilliance. Above all, it’s your luminous spirit and good guy charm that will help you get where you need to be. I love you. A lot.

Shutlow - Lotus, we have a deep connection. We have similar likes, and dislikes, but that’s not enough to establish a bond. Initially, we clicked because we’re “artists”, but our interests span more than art, and I have a feeling if I wasn’t particularly artistic, we’d still be friends. That’s beautiful. You’re beautiful. Happy belated birthday, dear! I love you.

Skirtonfire - Fatima, thank you for being the BEST friend a girl can have. I’ve never met someone that thinks just like me in the ways that count most, that is of my culture, and formally Muslim as well. You’re a ray of hope in a dark world. You’re a strong example. You’re my age, and sometimes I think you have years on me! You spurred my change from Midwestern Muslim girl with African-Arabo roots to WORLDLY FIERCE FEMINIST of a certain race, and regional disposition, a year ago, and I love you for that.

Essaych - Cousin Sagal. Of all the people I figured would apostatize, I was not expecting you to. Apostasy I would not wish on my best cousin/friend. It’s too overwhelming. It’s too fast, and slow at the same time. It’s too terrifying. It’s too time-consuming, and life-changing. You’re going through the motions I experienced around the same time I experienced them, and I can respect that. You’re actually not ill-equipped like me, though. You’re going to come out of this untainted, strong, and much more than a cultural Muslim, a human being. Don’t kid yourself. Religion isn’t in the cards for you because you’re a freethinker, unanchored to misogynistic social norms, and religious practices, I think you’re going to begin you “real life” pretty soon. Don’t credit me. It was all you. It took you to unhinge the shackles, and it’s going to take you stay this fearless forever. The first, and only step to freethinking is thinking freely. Bravo, babygirl. It brings tears to my eyes thinking about the fact that a couple years ago we spent an entire summer listening to Maroon 5’s “This Love” and spending nights just talking, and talking endlessly about everything, and EVERYONE. “Yo future so bright you have wear shades!” - REMEMBER THAT? Hah.

Jellydonut52 - Ahmad Radheyyan. I must constantly reiterate the fact that you’re HILARIOUS. You know this much because you actually do stand-up comedy, but I feel like you forget it sometimes. On top of being funny, you’re also smart as hell. You’re Smarter Than a 5th Grader-smart, man, and I’m happy for you, and I’mma let you finish, but all I have is this Kanye meme. I love you.

Areza - other Ahmad. You’ve been through so much. I am so melodramatic about my life, but you always seem to be so composed. I’m lucky, and truly grateful to know you. You’re a wonderful man. As Ambassador of Badassery, and Global Gaga Awareness Exec. for your human rights organization, I must say, you’ll touch more than just me, and a thousand + tumblr people. You’re going to leave a phenomenal impact on the world. Your music will leave a phenomenal impact on the world. You’re so patient with me, and kind, and I love you for that, akhi. Lady Gaga loves you too, and you need to learn to love her back.

Ben G. - The epitome of cool, calm, and collected. Thanks for being there for me for the past couple of years in that way that only you could be there for me: by laughing AT, and WITH me. I Love you.

K-troll - We’re making a lot of the same realizations. We’ve both come to the conclusion that self-loathing was the root of the problem, and we’re growing up. I believe in you. I know it sounds cheesy, but seriously, I believe you’re going to do great things. You’re at the cusp of something great, I know it. Keep moon-walking. I Love you. *Hugs*

Hodon- You’re the homegirl. A down sister. A Somali girl so above the fray. You’re not judgemental. You have a ”fuck ‘em!” attitude that I love so much about you, and you’re just a beautiful person in general. I wish you weren’t enlisting in the army, but you know your life better than anyone, and I trust that you’ve thought this through. Stay strong. I’m always here for you. I love you.

0300- Sany,  I feel like you’re the only one who GETS ME in regards to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Justin Nozuka, and the many men we lust for. You’re immensly talented, and a damn harworker. You’re always up for 18 hours editing videos. I’m glad you told me about your journey to ex-Muslimhood. I feel like there needs to be a fuck yeah! Ex-Muslims. I love you.

Everyone else: Lady Gaga, Zach Braff, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Justin Nozuka, Dhool, Dtronics, Evangel, Mars, MissMeliiMel, Kelsium, Nathaniel James, JulesRamzy, Mush, godisagamble, UsuallyCrazy, novazembla, Jungle Justine, sinkships, and Destiny. My eyes hurt. You’re all more than honorable mentions, but I’m LAZY, so I’ll just say I like you all for different reasons, and though with some of you it took NOT LIKING YOU to get around, I’m glad I did because I was just limiting myself by not coming around sooner.

CUE THE EVER-SOCIALLY RELEVANT ZACH BRAFF SOUNDTRACK MUSIC

Finding yourself is not as easy as watching a cool movie you wish you wrote wherein the protagonist experiences a happy ending before their life even officially begins, leaving you with that fuzzy, insular feeling of false optimism for a fictional future featuring delicately placed minor setbacks, and major wins. Finding yourself takes getting dirtied up. It takes derailment. It takes depression. It takes a deafening deferment of your dreams. It takes making some fucked up choices that will impact your life. It takes estrangement. It takes confrontation. It takes abandoning the religion your parents handed down to you. It takes near-death experiences. It takes selfish acts of stupidity, and desperation to trigger the quarter life identity crisis that will ultimately trigger you finally coming to terms with you.

YEAH, YOU. You’re not one to drop knowledge, but if you’ve learned one thing worth passing on to others, it’s that you’re only sad because you hate yourself. Yes, YOU, hate yourself. Remember being 8 years-old, stepping on the scale in the bathroom to find out you were 85 lbs? Never mind that you were close to underweight because you were a tall kid. That number was too close to 100, and 100 was too close to fat, and pretty girls aren’t fat, and thus you starved yourself for a couple of days only to psychologically magnify the baby pudge of your cheeks. You were so afraid to look in the mirror after that. The sight of your naturally round face frightened you. That’s when you started hating yourself.

But suicide wasn’t an option back then. The only thing you knew about killing yourself was that it would displease God, and land you in hell with all of the non-believers your parents, and religious instructors taught you to look down on. Fast forward 2 years, and everything is going relatively fine until someone you trust violates your body. This only leads to more self-loathing. You don’t know the extent of what happened the first time it happened, but you know that God was watching, and it was probably your fault, and you deserved it, and had it coming. Fast forward 9 years. You’re 19 years-old, and you still haven’t told your parents what happened to you. Never mind the fact that you’re suppose to be this Atheist with extremely liberal, and feminist leanings that wouldn’t penalize or condemn another girl for having been through the same thing— inside, you still adhere to archaic scriptures penned by drunken, egomaniacal, CHAUVANISTIC men that determined thousands of years ago, that you, because you were born with a vagina, unless you walk around in a bird cage, God has ordained every man on this planet to do whatever they want to you. It’s not pedophilia. It’s not molestation. It’s not a violation, or a crime against humanity. It’s being a little slut, and not keeping your eyes fixed on the floor in the presence of the superior sex. It’s having been oblivious of the fact that the biggest offense you’ve ever committed is not having mutilated genitals because your parents love you, and decided that of all the things handed down to them that they were willing to discard, an unnecessary cultural practice meant to instill a ferocious discontent for your self, your body, and your sex, was one. Too bad you never loved yourself like your parents wanted you to love yourself when they made that decision for you.

In addition to your parents not knowing, your friends don’t know what happened. Your sisters don’t know. Your therapist doesn’t even know. And yet, you’re choosing to come out in the most public way anyone could come out about abuse: on the internet. You’re crying so hard you can’t even see the words on your computer screen. You’re thinking about cancelling this entry because the memories of a person you still see on a yearly basis fondling you, are so vivid. You remember trying to say what happened so many times, only to stop mid-statement, or blurt out something totally unrelated to what you intended to tell. You know that you have to get this off of your chest, but you can’t tell your parents because your parents might confront him, and that would be dramatic, and useless because it’s too late to report him to the proper authorities; too many years have went by. You’re supposed to be over it by now. You’re not supposed to still hate your body, and yourself. You’re supposed to be an example. Why the fuck were you ever hailed as bright? A bright person would not place the blame of abuse on themselves for almost a decade. A bright person would have already alerted their parents. A bright person would have kicked, and screamed. A bright person would have applied simple logic. A bright person would have have put everything in the past, and started loving themselves ages ago.

For so long you blamed it on the many moves you made as a kid; your parents de-socializing you nearly every year of your life. You blamed your problems on your height. You blamed it on your father’s sisters beating, humiliating, and traumatizing you the summer before 6th grade. You blamed it on Islam. You blamed it on never feeling socially adequate enough because you were of the wrong color or the wrong religion, or wrong denomination, or the wrong nationality, or the wrong clan. You read everything you could get your hands on pertaining to ethnic adolescent development before you were even supposed to know what that meant, and watched every coming-of-age film recommended to you by your American friends to maybe, just maybe, feel as American as them for once in your life.

You tried getting in touch with your roots only to find out your roots reject you. You’re not crying out of self-pity, or sadness for the first time. You’re crying because you’ve shifted the blame for once. You’re realizing that your problem from the very beginning was the self-hate rife within the core of your very being. It was not willed by a God. It was not what your parents intended. Maybe you’re genetically pre-disposed to a crippling lack of self-esteem, but it started the day you stepped on that scale, and only escalated into a depression because you never had the courage to tip-toe off of that scale. You weighed yourself everyday of your life. Even a couple months ago, still hoping to reach 118, knowing that your 5’10 frame can’t support the size 2 body you envision for yourself. You are a curvy girl, but you hate the word curvy. Curvy, to you, has always been a euphemism for fat, and ugly, and you hate euphemisms. You feel that the attention you’ve received from the opposite sex in last 19 years for being dangerously bootylicious, even at the ripe of age 10, is unwarranted, but you have decided to stop hurting, and stop hating yourself today.

Today, you are a woman. You weren’t a woman the day your mother poured candy, and popcorn over your head, and threw eggs in your direction, in an effort to give you a vital slice of some superstitious, Somali tradition you had been lacking up until the day you got your period. Today, you are a woman because you’re taking the necessary steps to get better for real this time. You’re doing what you can to achieve happiness, and success, and fully come to terms with you, and the ailments that come with your womanhood. You’re finally seeing the potential, and beauty within you that you never saw before because you were too blind-sighted, and weighed down by numbers on a scale, and a pitiful excuse for a human being that karmic retribution will handle in due time.

You’re finding yourself. It took getting dirtied up. It took derailment. It took depression. It took a deafening deferment of your dreams. It took making some fucked up choices that still impact your life to date. It took estrangement. It took confrontation. It took abandoning the religion your parents handed down to you. It took near-death experiences. It took selfish acts of stupidity, and desperation to trigger the quarter life identity crisis that triggered you finally coming to terms with you.

I Don't Crush On the Obscure

My celebrity crush isn’t the lead singer of a band that was signed to a major label only to subsequently be dropped in a sad month in the sad year of ’96, only to crop up on my itunes accidentally many years after the release of their one non-hit song, only for me to soak up the generational angst, and pseudo-nostalgia, only to come to the conclusion the man was an illiterate that didn’t deserve his minuscule success, and was dropped with good reason. No. My celebrity crushes are actual celebrities.

Geographically Awkward Slang

This is Minnesota. There will be no mention of “hella,” or “wicked.” Class dismissed.