Did You Miss Me? I Sure Did.

My last post on HFOW was a year and a half ago. I don’t know about you, but I feel like some big shit went down between December of 2019 and July of 2021? Like maybe something fundamentally shifted worldwide for a whole year? I just can’t quite put my finger on it…

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then chances are that you just woke up from a coma. To which I say, congratulations! You missed out on some Wild Shit^TM and hopefully you get to receive a couple of shots and continue on about your life without the trauma that the rest of the world carries! You’re probably better rested than the rest of us! You look stunning! How do you feel?

2020 was actually not the worst year on record for me, which is both a privilege and an annoyance. After I transitioned meds, I started on a journey into polyamory that resulted in a nearly year-long relationship with a man that I was crazy in love with who turned out to be… just like my dad. Like, eerily like my father. The biggest difference is that this man is white and is much more knowledgable about things that helped me shape my racial identity than my dad was. Which is weird, because my dad was Black, and I am Black (and white). But my dad helped develop my racial identity by calling me Whiteny and this man helped me develop my racial identity by pointing me to several authors. In fact, he was instrumental in giving me the language that helped me discover just how messed up our relationship was.

It was the best relationship for me at the time, and it was the worst relationship for me at the time. When I went no-contact with the person I had wanted to spend the rest of my life with, it made me look at the wounds caused by my Dad and actually feel them. And boy howdy, did I have a lot of feelings. Like, I had all the feelings. All the times I hadn’t cried about the way my father treated me, in therapy, after this relationship, I sobbed. All the times I hadn’t expressed anger for the way my father gaslit me or devalued me, I expressed in therapy after this relationship.

In fact, I’d go into therapy and be like, “Barbara! This thing that happened in this relationship mirrors exactly this thing that happened with my dad, and I have feelings about it, and, like what the fuck.”

And my therapist, Barbara (I call her Babs to my friends), was like, “Oh goody, we finally get to talk about the thing you’ve been avoiding talking about for the entire four years we’ve worked together!” And then she cackled maniacally (that’s a lie). The reason why I hadn’t delved into my daddy issues is because I thought I had healed them. That relationship taught me otherwise. It taught me that I had analyzed them from every angle except the emotional one, and I needed to do that before building any more romantic relationships.

Anyway, that reckoning also came at a time when the job that I loved decided they didn’t give two shits about me and gave my job away. They told me it’s because they “don’t prioritize part-time employees” which is a) bullshit and b) horseshit, because there are two other part-time English teachers, they just happen to be cisgendered, straight, white, and married to each other.

But that’s a different story.

All of a sudden, I found myself with oodles of free time and an itch to return to my writing. I wanted to pick this blog back up and have fun with it. I wanted to seriously dedicate myself to my writing, because other than when I first got HFOW started from January-July of 2012, I haven’t ever just focused on my writing. So that’s what I’m doing now!

To that end, HFOW is back. Also, I have a new blog, with a whole different concept, that’s letting me lean into an aspect of my identity that I find hilarious: my astrological sign.

If you are so inclined, please head over to Medium and follow my new project, Ask a Virgo. It’ll be fun, I promise. Sure, it won’t be as obnoxious as HFOW, but it will still be a good time.

It’s good to be back.