Esther Falick

But like it's also the first time that a lot of people are seeing me since I've come out.

So it's like.

This is heavy.

I feel like I'm going home and I'm grieving and I feel like I'm a spectacle.

Yeah, it's so intense.

I feel like I can't just grieve because now I feel like I'm being watched.

Something you never think about is the different ways that grieving is gendered.

I feel like I was being watched, not from my nuclear family.

By this point, they were like, yeah, Esther, she's just our annoying sister.

But other folks, I felt like they were like, oh, is she grieving the right way?

Is she grieving like a woman?

Yeah.

for fuck's sake yeah did you have an interaction that made you think that people were feeling that way or was it just you felt it mostly just that I felt it living in New York and being like a marginalized person I had like learned the skills of becoming really aware of your surroundings and like watching for people like looking at you in certain ways you know hyper aware

Exactly.

So I had like kind of built those muscles and I was like seeing how people were looking and when and where.

One particular thing was like my priest at my Catholic church.

Oh, man.

Need I say more?

Yeah.

I felt like he like couldn't look at me because he probably doesn't interact with any trans people because like probably that church isn't super chill about it.