A Portland Love Letter

[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]

Dear Portland, 

I never felt like I belonged anywhere until we met. When I left you, I was heartbroken, but I had no choice. Years have passed, and my love for you remains strong. I want to get back together, make it work. Give me a chance.

Growing up in rural Washington, people said I was weird. You said it too but it felt like a compliment. I wandered your streets, looking for myself, escaping myself, finding the true me. You introduced me to people I shared things in common. You showed me I could start an all woman punk band, be an artist, realize my dreams.

you gave me the chance to teach timid girls how to rock, find their voice, assert themselves: priceless. When I needed something, you made sure I could almost always find it on the sidewalk waiting, for free. 

You told me if I came out as pansexual, I would find community and I did. You gave me an unending supply of hot hookups that taught me pleasures that I cannot speak of here in cow country. You showed me that I do not have to fit a mold to be accepted, worthy. 

You let me dress in drag and hang with the cool girls downtown. You never let anyone know that I had a vagina or that the Adam’s Apple beneath my choker didn’t exist. You taught me how to be fluid back when gender was still dictated by anatomy.

When we were together, I was never bored, felt alone, or more alive. I miss your summer berries, rose gardens, green spaces, and clothes by the pound. Now, exiled across the mountain in the desert, no friends, social life, or financial plan that would bring me home to you, my sense of loss for the love we shared inspired me to complete my first novel where you are a character in your own right. It tells the story of my love for you. 

Someday, I will find my way back home. I love you forever, Portland. Your the only city for me. 

Love,
X

VoiceLess

[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]

Many times I’ve been on a bus with the driver taking us a different route with no explanation, or the driver missed the route, and all the riders look up, look at each other gesturing and confused, all the while noone speaks up. People will just sit there. I’ve been on buses before with altercations and people just sit there, keep to themselves. Sometimes the drivers don’t even intervene. I’ve been on a bus before where there was unexpected snowfall and we happen to be on a hill, and was stuck. I went out and put some rocks under the tire and got us out. No joke. No one else did anything. I got one thank you from another rider, which I did it because I didn’t wanna be stuck there for hours on a crowded bus, not for acknowledgement. I’ll walk the streets and there could be altercations, or folks in distress, yelling, or passed out. Noone does anything. It’s a little understandable with the risk of involving ourselves in violence. I’ve seen pet owners hitting their dogs to which I say how would you like it. I’ve seen a man in distress with the “Blue walking street Crew” just standing and addressing what’s going on with 10 people around shooting videos. We live in this spectacle society where everyone keeps a distance, doesn’t say or do anything, and just wants to watch the entertainment. Just look at all the YouTube shorts you been watching all day. No one wants to act out of kindness and goodness anymore. That’s what I notice with this world we live in now. 
I’ll go with the flow too. 
Sometimes it’s better to just not care like all you other amazing citizens without any passion or conviction for anything other than dumps, food, and video games.—Anonymous

The Neighbors

[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]

I’ve been told I’m a good neighbor by my one neighbor. I guess they had bad neighbors before me. What makes a bad neighbor? Loud music and noises? Sketchy activity and people coming and going at all hours? Unkempt yards? Encroaching and impeding elements from one neighbor to the next? 
I don’t have “big” neighbor problems. But as we say, it’s the little things. 
There’s one neighbor with their bright ass florescent light in the kitchen that is blinding from across the street, and on at all hours of the day for long periods. The one neighbor with 4 cars that needs to be backed in with headlights blaring into my view. The neighbors with the tenants that sit on their porch and heads down on their phones, every time I step outside. Like, how do you just not have a job? Or how do you never have to leave your house? The neighbor who will walk back and forth in their fenced in yard for exercise. The neighbor with motion sensor bright ass lights on every corner of their house, especially the one facing my bedroom, and in their backyard. The neighbors who play basketball in their backyard instead of playing on their street or going to a park. I’m glad I don’t live in an apartment anymore though.—Anonymous

To Be a Ghost in Portland

[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]

I’ve been here for a few years, now, and I’ve grown to love this city. Amazing food, great people, lots of interesting things to do. The longer I’ve been here, the more the city has pushed me out. I feel like I’m a splinter and the city around me is closing in like swollen flesh. The pressures of trying to survive have come to a head, like many others before me have felt. Money for food. Money for rent. Money for medicine. Money for clothes. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, the money runs out and you have to make a lot of choices. Selling your car. Selling your things. Giving your pets away to people who can take care of them more. It’s like you’re taking a pair of scissors and snipping away bits of yourself. A fingertip here. An eyelid there. That’s why they put ridges on the sides of coins – to prevent shavers from pocketing little bits of the silver and making their own free silver bars. 

That’s what it feels like, to live in Portland. Like I’m a ghost. And like my personality, especially as a trans person, is nicked and shaved and snipped away by people around me. Pocketed for themselves and I’m left full of holes. I’m being pecked at by scavengers while I’m calling social security and being sent through the same robotic prompts over and over in an attempt to get me to give up. I’m being plucked away by strangers who expect me to perform for them like some sort of dancing turkey. My features are being shaves away by a society that fetishizes people like me and also wants us to just go away because it’s more convenient to pretend that we don’t exist and aren’t suffering. 

Being a ghost means I was a whole person, before. Now I’m just spread out all over Portland. Everyone I’ve met has a little piece of me stashed away somewhere. No one knows about or wants to know the whole thing. They just needed the bit that made them feel special while I was still more whole.—Anonymous