In May of last year, I began working in the cannabis industry. Yes, you read that correctly. Your girl, who has been arrested five times and in rehab six times, is working with a substance that is still illegal in many states. Alanis Morrisette would appreciate the irony.
The cultural shift from working in small-town coffee shops to the inner-city Detroit cannabis industry has been rocky at best for this Taylor Swift-worshiping white girl. Last summer, three weeks after starting this new job, I was lucky enough to attend the Eras Tour live. While standing in a two-hour line to purchase overpriced merch, I giddily proclaimed, “I am going to wear this T-shirt to work every day next week! I don’t care what anyone thinks of me!”
Except I did care. So much so that I only wore my Eras Tour T-shirt once underneath a zipped-up lightweight jacket in 80-degree heat. Presumably, if I wanted to be respected in a building full of MAGA hat-wearing stoners, outing myself as a Swiftie (more specifically, a Gaylor**) was not the way to go.
So, for the past nine months, to assimilate and manage this occupational shift, self-suppression has been my go-to survival mechanism.
This concept of self-suppression has been a repetitive theme in my life ever since I learned what the Body Mass Index (BMI) was at fourteen years old. For those who don’t know, BMI is a simple equation that uses a weight-to-height ratio to determine if a person is underweight, healthy, overweight, or obese. Immediately after discovering this, I began suppressing my innately intuitive hunger cues. My goal was to hit the lowest possible weight for my height within the BMI’s “healthy” range. Doing so, I believed, would allow me to squeeze into size 2 Hollister jeans and pass as heterosexual.
Worse yet, the BMI was created in the 1830s by a Eugenicist named Adolphe Quetelet. His work didn’t take female or minority bodies into account. He was only interested in procreating a world of slim white European men, which, of course, is incredibly racist. Without knowing it, I was, quite literally, suppressing myself to fit the standards of white supremacy at the tender age of fourteen.
As I got older, self-suppression began showing up in every aspect of my life. I liked self-suppression because it worked in the short-term, providing a (false) sense of connection and belonging. By splitting myself into two - an outwardly presentable robot and a closeted super-sensitive autistic queer - I found a way to survive.
The only problem with short-term solutions is that they often have long-term consequences. To cope with the nonstop suppression and detachment, I began leaning on alcohol and bulimia in secret. Numbing myself was addictively soothing after a long day of faking.
For the past few weeks, I have been telling my therapist that I am experiencing constant, intense, red-hot anger. I hate everything and everyone (except Ted and Taylor Swift, of course). Naturally, now that I am substance and bulimia free, the full spectrum of emotions, including anger, have surfaced.
Brene Brown, the queen of emotional literacy, says anger is a secondary emotion with something deeper underneath it.
Decades of self-suppression live beneath my lingering anger issues. I don’t actually hate everything and everyone. Instead, I am projecting a lifetime of suppressed shame, isolation, fear, jealousy, frustration, hurt, and rejection onto others.
After sitting with my anger for a few weeks, I have concluded that the anecdote to a lifetime of self-suppression is relentless and unabashed self-expression.
In light of the recent right-wing backlash against Taylor Swift, I decided to practice relentless and unabashed self-expression by showing up for my cannabis industry job dressed in Tswift apparel every day last week.
Was I nervous my coworkers would think less of me? Of course.
Were my armpits extra sweaty in anticipation? You bet.
Did I lose the respect of those who feel threatened by powerful women? Probably.
Am I done, as Taylor would say, silently absorbing the behavior of men? Hell yes. Haters gonna hate.
Most importantly, did I feel a sense of freedom for the first time in two decades? Ahhh, yes. Finally. A breath of fresh air.
After just one week of relentless and unabashed self-expression, my anger levels have dropped significantly. Overall, I feel lighter, less rageful, more compassionate. I can’t help but wonder if all of us are trapped in some form of self-suppression, explaining society’s current extreme polarization and projectile hatred toward those with opposing views.
All I can hope for moving forward is an imperfect, lifelong journey of unlearning and relearning. By unlearning outdated, toxic body standards, like the BMI, I create space to relearn the innately intuitive hunger cues possessed by my pre-teen self. By unlearning internalized homophobia, I create space for authentic connection and belonging. By unlearning self-suppression, I create space for relentless and unabashed self-expression.
In the meantime, I will wrap myself in a cozy blanket of infinite grace while obnoxiously blasting Taylor Swift everywhere I go.
Progress.
**As a Gaylor, no one will ever convince me that Taylor and Travis Kelce’s relationship is real. It is 100000% PR. Travis is a beard and a mastermind-level, $331.5-million-dollar marketing scheme. Taylor is the gayest gay of all the gays. She has been queer-flagging her entire career. If the idea of the most powerful woman in the world being queer upsets you, I urge you to check your homophobia. Need more proof? Check out this TikTok page.
((( P.S. THE TORTURED POET’S DEPARTMENT!!! OMFGGGGG!!! )))