The Randomist

I’m coming out. That deafening roar you just heard was 95% of everyone I’ve ever known shouting “I KNEW it!” Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not coming out of THAT closet. My sexual preferences lie where they always have, mostly in myself. I’m coming out of what might be a scarier closet. There are certainly more skeletons in this one. It’s a door that everyone wishes would stay firmly shut, but I’m going to open it, again. I want to stand up today and introduce myself to you. I want you to meet the real Heather Heartless. Not just the bitchy angry one, not just the one that makes you laugh, but the one I keep hidden away. My name is Heather and I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder… among other things. On March 14, 2009, I looked out the window of the gas station where I was working and saw two men approaching on foot from the road. My very first thought, honest to God, is “They’re going to rob me.” And they did. Violently. No one asked for money. No one said “This ...

I have these lines on my hands; tons and tons of little lines all over my palms. I like to think that they’re “experience”. Sometimes, like today, I think they’re cracks. You can’t see them unless I show them to you; unless you’re looking for them. You can’t see them if you don’t get close enough. But they’re there. I have all of these scars on my arms. Only one or two that were put there intentionally. They were put there by animals, mostly. The things I loved unconditionally that hurt me; left their mark on me. A few came from things I was careless with. I was thinking about these things because I was staring at my hands today, wondering what they were capable of. What could these two hands do? They’ve made art, they’ve made music, they’ve made love, and they’ve caused pain… but could they really hurt something? Could they take a life? Could they destroy a life? Could they be used to cause irrevocable damage to a person or their mind? I’m not sure. I am sure that I have wa...