Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission. One summer, I stayed in Cedar Key, Florida, a once-thriving port that was now a sleepy island. I was newly bisexual and polyamorous, and a bit lost. I had opened up a long-term relationship with a cis man in order to date a genderqueer, disabled person. I was done playing mistress. I hate the imperative that marginalized women have to be saints. I was born disabled. I walk with a computerized leg and have chronic pain.
I spent so many years in the Lutheran Church where my body was used as a teaching tool, a side note in a sermon, inspirational fodder.
To turn away from that, I sought pleasure for my own pleasure. I want agency, ambition, and freedom. I saw too clearly the paradox of time: In one moment, I was the truth with a person.
In another, I was the lie. So I went into my 30s thinking, Enough with all that. The new person and I did not start as friends. I was smitten as soon as I met them. Why was I blushing? Why was I wearing jeans and a T-shirt? Why was I irritated? No, I was not okay. I had finally found a monogamous relationship with a guy, as stubborn about alone time as I was, and with no restrictions on my ambition. I could make anything: I wrote a speculative novel and a book of poems where he appeared, created a satirical web series, and performed as a nondisabled character, Tipsy Tullivan, for several years.
I refused. I got engaged. And then, suddenly, I was having intense feelings for another person. I felt some kind of wild desire, like a fire toward a forest. This new person had their own life with someone else, too. I agreed. And I was already too far in. So what? I learned from all of the activists who came before me and taught me about access and having equal rights.
