Last night, after the panel and the group and as everyone was talking, I was telling one of our panelists, our executive director, and some new attendees why it was so important to me that out on film start something like the queer film alliance is because of two things - marginalized communities are more vulnerable to being taken advantage of, and new/green/inexperienced people are vulnerable to being taken advantage of.

Sometimes I think what has happened to my life - in the best possible way. But there’s always that one thought that has to be kept at bay, a dangerous thought to entertain - what if I had just been born in the right body. The body that matched my own personal reflection. Dangerous, because once one travels down the road of what-ifs and shoulds and could-have-beens, then one sets oneself up for unhappiness. Accepting, sometimes radically, where one is at in life is the most potent antidote for traveling down those roads. Accepting what is, instead of what could have been.

I stay busy, not intentionally to not process my own feelings but that is an unfortunate side effect of “doing.” And I do the initial processing. The triage. After bandaged, and sufficiently stabilized, I send them to the emotions specialists (I know I’m not the only one who imagines the mind as this department of departments.) It’s just often there’s a backlog.