About

Right to Bleed

Permission to be and fail and love it, loudly, accurately, publicly, and on purpose.

I’m Issa. I’m 32, and I live in the greater Atlanta area with Joshua, who’s my lover and partner, plus two of our friends and their toddler. We love and struggle together on a daily basis. We’re all hippies, yippies, and burners, of one flavor or another, and we’re trying to make our way in a world that wants us to do it all in one particular way that doesn’t suit any  of us very well at all.

I’m a hard-core liberal in most ways. I’m pro-abortion, an atheist, and I don’t get what all the fuss is about gay marriage. I’d gladly give all my money to the government if it meant that no one would ever torture a human being or animal in my name. I try to eat organic. My housemates are growing food, and I help out by minding the compost bin. I used to live in a van, and while I currently live in a huge house in the suburbs, my hippie-van-dwelling still shows in that I hardly own anything.

I currently don’t have a job, because I’m going through a period in my life where I refuse to do anything that doesn’t  delight and fascinate me. Of course, I’m also broke and mooching off of others, which isn’t great for my self-esteem, but it’s a process, and I’m still committed to it. I’m also depressed and in therapy, but I figure that the world gives me a lot to be depressed about. I’ve got a tendency to see everything as my fault, but I’m not sure that my depression isn’t a completely healthy reaction to the world I live in.

“Right to bleed” is a phrase that has stuck in my mind for years as an anthem touching on many themes in my life. It’s a shortened form of “I have a right to bleed.” Bleed means anything that you’re not “supposed” to do or supposed to admit to. I want to be free to fail, gloriously, however I want. I want to make mistakes and admit to them and even enjoy them and do them again later on purpose. I want to be free to do whatever I want to myself, even if others think it’s harmful to me. I want to enjoy my sicknesses and oddnesses. I want to be different, not folding myself into boxes created by other people. I want to be free to fuck up, and it not “mean” something. All the ways in which I am different, I want to be open about, not sugarcoating anything or packaging it for the masses.

Right to Bleed as a blog is, in general, just whatever’s on my mind. In keeping with my desire for openness, I enjoy figuring stuff out in public, out there for the world to see and comment on. I am a flaming hippie liberal atheist, and a lot of the themes here fit with that description. I’m a bit of an anarchist, and when I think “American culture”, I’m not having shiny, happy thoughts. I’m appalled at some of the ways in which we try to force other people into our cultural constraints.

I have some policies for this site, in keeping with my desire to push everything into the open. You will never see a NSFW label here or “objectionable” things hidden off the main page. It’s not my job to try to determine what you do and don’t want to see. I leave that up to you. Also, you’ll never see a “trigger warning” for much the same reason. I don’t moderate comments, either. I think it’s set up so that I have to approve the first comment from a person, but that’s just to avoid spam. No matter how offensive someone’s words are, if they were written for this blog, they will appear here and not be deleted.

I’m often angry at the world, and I’m sure that shows. I have a right to be, though. I’m often discontent with myself, and that probably shows, as well. I also have a right to that. I have permission from myself to be just as I am, wailing in pain or thrashing in ecstasy, in public, as loudly and accurately as possible.

Welcome. Enjoy.