Pooya Mohseni

pooya Mohseni: Them, Me, You

What saved me? Therapy and community. I owe so much to my counselors at The Hetrick Martin Institute, a not-for-profit organization that provides social services to LGBTQIA+ youth, and to Safe Space, another not-for-profit delivering mental health services; I went there when I first moved to NYC in 1997. Also to those at my own university, FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology. The staff and others at all three places allowed me to open myself, gradually, and to slowly exorcise my demons. They let me show myself to me through hours of talking about what had happened, hours of crying “Why?” and “Why me?”, and still more hours acknowledging that, deep inside, I believed it when people said that I was to blame and had brought those things on myself. Not society. Not antiquated ideas about gender and sexuality but that my own difference was the thing that needed to be hidden and left abandoned.

But that’s garbage. I was not at fault for the shortcomings of others and neither are you. Don’t forget self-discipline and accountability, but don’t confuse them with a society coercing you to be someone other than who you are.