SHAME ISSUE 25/09/2017

An eating disorder turns you into a liar. It’s so easy to lie once you start. It turns out, lies just fall out of your mouth as easily as other words do.

Weeks after I was still thinking: what if she realizes who I really am and can’t be friends with me?

These are things I am ashamed of in my identity of being an Arab queer woman. 

I considered myself an honest person, with integrity. Now I was seeing how quickly those categories can crumble.

At night I do what I want and in the morning I try to pick up the pieces.

Exposed now, I was unable to pretend any longer that everything was okay and that life and I were perfect. 

Intellectually I know I’m not to blame but part of me still hates myself for letting it happen. Shame. Blame. I should write a song.

I’m a first-generation daughter of Egyptian immigrants, a youngest child and a 32-year-old woman living alone in Toronto. I love chocolate, cheese and coffee.

I had a gut feeling that what we were doing was bad. We all panicked to put our clothes back on and leave the room.

Rumours were going around the school about the number of gay women on the team. Despite making it to Nationals that season, we were then dropped as a program citing "budget cuts."