Category: Personal Essay
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Alternative Treatments I’m Considering for my Migraines
Unfortunately, the usual treatments for migraines haven’t been wicked successful for me recently. I’ve tried Triptans and Beta Blockers and Ubrelvy, monthly CGRP injections, infusions, even Botox, with little effect. So, I’ve decided to look into alternatives. Below is a list of some of the treatments I’m considering.
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Pride at the Beach
When I think of Pride, it’s not fit as hell gay men shirtless and decked in feathers dancing on a Chase bank float. It’s women running into the ocean shrieking with girlish laughter. It’s a little girl and her mothers at the beach building a drip castle. It’s kissing my love in the waves, tasting…
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Racing Down that Road
I used to think life was a freeway. A long, open expanse of asphalt to be hurled over. No speed limit, like the autobahns in Germany where you can push your engine as hard as you want. A flat space to accelerate faster and faster over until the speedometer inches beyond the illuminated dashes.
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My Polycule: Me, My Girlfriend and My Chronic Illnesses
Since polyamory seems to be all the rage these days in mainstream media, I thought I’d tell you about my relationship. You could say my girlfriend and I are in a polycule with multiple rather demanding partners, all mine. It’s not a very healthy dynamic, sometimes my other partners get in the way of our…
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A Visit From an Old Friend
Having multiple chronic illnesses is like having friends who live out of town that like to pop by unannounced. Sometimes it will be a long while between visits. So long in fact you almost kind of forget they exist. And then one day, BAM, there they are, standing at your front door with a duffle…
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The casual homophobia of my period tracking app
I have PCOS, which means my cycles are incredibly irregular. I’ve gone years without a period and months when I’ve had 2 in 4 weeks. As you might assume, this makes figuring out when I’m going to have my period a bit difficult. I started tracking my cycles last year when I got off birth…
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The Joy of Attending a Bat Mitzvah as an Adult
Last weekend, I attended my cousin’s daughter’s Bat Mitzvah in New Jersey and it was a spiritual experience, in more ways than one. I have attended probably close to 70 or 80 Bar and Bat Mitzvahs at this point in my life: friends and family, friends of the family, classmates, cousins, my siblings, siblings of…
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Embracing My Mess
For most of my 20’s, I was stuck in a dating cycle. Trying to navigate life, let alone dating, with multiple chronic pain conditions, undiagnosed ADHD and undertreated depression and anxiety left me a strange mix of both hyper independent and also incredibly vulnerable.
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The Body in Pain is a Wild Thing
When I was 13, I began a war against my body. It decided to grow taller and wider and rounder than any of the other kids in my class. Like many of this age, I hated even the idea of standing out. I thought: if I couldn’t be shorter, maybe I could collapse into myself…
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Kicking the Bucket
When I was 17, in a fit of truly 17 year old angst about how I had lived such a sheltered life, I made a bucket list, a declaration that my life, in the future, would not continue to be this small
Sarah Levine 