This interview was conducted by Katharine Blair on the 15th of May via email.
The questions and answers appear here in their unedited form.

For some reason it’s very important to me that you know that I pulled this book out to read on this Monday morning when I’m suddenly obsessed again with Nirvana’s 1993 appearance on MTV Unplugged (I’m fourteen and this is Appointment TV. Kurt Cobain has only had three cups of tea so far but he appreciates the applause for Something in the Way and I’ve Pearl Jam tickets and a boyfriend with hair just like Beck). It is, in other words, a moment that finds me likewise looking back. Trauma kids or whatever but I try not to do this. I try to stay now faced and head down as best as I can. As you ask from the outset, ‘what do you do when the abyss stares back?’

I touched on this a bit in my blog entry for Querencia Press, but ultimately, I find that the only way to combat the abyss is to create through it. This book technically started when my former partner and I broke up at the beginning of the pandemic—I didn’t know what else to do, so I started writing. I saw it as some kind of project for future publication, but it served mostly as a release for me. Years later, I started thinking about the abyss, or the inherent stasis of the mental health crisis that ensued after freeing myself from an abusive relationship and entering into a healthy one. I was still reflecting on many of the same topics—queerness, body, what the fuck to do now that I was constantly dissociating. I was writing new stuff, but I also looked back at the work that would become part of abyss, then titled i hate this place. It all came together in a way that made sense. I really liked that, so I ran with it. It became a portrait of the abyss—stillness, digital ephemera, and a lot of angst.

“The reason we didn’t want to play these three songs in a row is because they are exactly the same song” and yeah, Kurt. I get it. But it’s still not the right poem. There’s a desperation here amidst all the seeking. For right words and right thoughts and the exact combination of line breaks to lessen the grief. ‘god said fuck nat raum in particular’ you write in episodic memory and I can’t help but read it tired and petty in the voice of an adult who misses the release of a good playground tantrum. ‘I am the most loathsome weight to shoulder’ and you mean it. As adults we’re called on to shoulder so much of ourselves not of our own making. How much of your writing lies in an attempt to lessen this load?

My creative work as a whole is absolutely a way of lessening this load. I have used my practice as a coping mechanism more times than I can count—something about looking at things through a creative lens allows me to process and heal. I don’t know when I started doing it, but I will probably never stop. I trace it back to early college when I was sexually assaulted and made almost all of my finals about it. It didn’t necessarily feel better, but it was a way of confronting what I was feeling that I found effective.

i want to know how i will write about the first night i actually felt queer.

i heart my fat ass

Is this excitement or detachment? Are you curious as agent of change or as observer? I guess what I’m asking is how much influence do you feel you have over yourself and how much is an unfolding? I err to observer of a foregone creation. I’m curious about how one might gather the reins and turn oneself on track.

This was one of the pieces that came from i hate this place, so at the time? It was detachment. 100% detachment. I felt so disembodied when I first wrote that piece. I think I wanted to preserve the moment and all that it stood for—rebirth, renewal, and new beginnings. On the note of influence, I have always felt that I live what memoirists call “a life examined.” My writing is almost my primary source of self-awareness in some ways—it allows me to reflect, unpack, and re-center.

I’ve just watched Kurt and the boys transition from More than a Feeling by Boston to Smells Like Teen Spirit at Reading in 1992 and I’m struck by the realisation that coming of age never changes and I could just as easily be watching you write in real time

When I'm tired and thinking cold
I hide in my music, forget the day
And dream of a girl I used to know
I closed my eyes and she slipped away
She slipped away
(Tom Scholz, What a Feeling)

And I forget, just why I taste
Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard, it's hard to find
Oh well, whatever, never mind
(Dave Grohl / Kurt Cobain / Krist Novoselic, Smells Like Teen Spirit)

i'm high and tired and the list of things i care about is dwindling by the minute.
nat raum, you may find yourself

This apathy cycle, how does one live it knowing it will continue? Do you ride out the lows? Do you live for the now?

The cycle of apathy is real. Like, too real. I always go back to something I told myself in 2015 after a different bad breakup: I have learned to crack my own back. I have learned to dry my own tears. I will go on. The only way for me to overcome my own apathy, sorrow, angst, whatever is to remind myself that I’ve done it before, and that I can.

There’s so much in here about bodies and I wonder what it’s like to not be so obsessed. Months ago at the table my eldest looked at me second born and I dumbfounded and said ‘wtf do you mean you can both feel your bones?’ Is that not expected? I don’t know whether I should be in awe of that free, or repulsed. I am more me for all of that knowing but so often I wish I were less. How do you live this trans/trauma body obsession? How often does the scale tip to wanting that brainspace back? Or, and I’m sorry in advance if we share this, have you never known a before? ‘are there some things you can run out of chances to fix?’ (voidspeak (shattered))

The body has always been a source of fascination for me. Even when I was coming up as a photographer, I have always followed this obsession. I don’t know where it stems from, but I tend to just let myself fall into it. It can be so incredibly painful, but I know I wouldn’t be who I am without all of this body obsession. Maybe it comes from growing up feeling like I didn’t quite fit in my body—I didn’t have words for it then, but I have never been able to concretely identify with the concept of gender. I didn’t feel like a little girl and then grow into transness; I have always felt a fundamental disconnect with my body. So, no, I guess there isn’t a ‘before’ to this stuff. It’s very much lifelong.

And there’s also the borderline personality disorder of it all—you know, the thing that kickstarted my hypersexuality and therefore contributed to a lot of my body angst. Ultimately, I feel like my struggle with emotional control has had some consequences for my body and the way I perceive it. So I guess to actually answer the question, I try not to think about my body too much. If I think about my actual insides, I freak out. And when I think of my body as a whole, I still feel somewhat disconnected from it. Disconnecting probably isn’t the “healthy” way to process the dilemma of existing in a body, but I also think of it as a way to say I am more than my flesh and bones.

From a practical standpoint how does your troubled embodiment (chronic pain, illness, transness oh my!) effect your life as a writer? We talk a lot about the body as subject, but what of the body as obstacle to the day to day of writing itself?

I have to be so gentle with myself in this body sometimes. I have to remind myself that I won’t always be operating at 100%, or even 50%. Besides everything happening in my head, I have a lot going on physically. Sometimes I want to write but my carpal tunnel and arthritis say no <3. Sometimes I have an idea but I’m physically exhausted. I have to be patient with myself. There’s no other way.

the duality of void (in sunlight i adore you and tell you/twenty seven times at least) arrives near the end of the collection after countless lamentations and accountings of toxic loves lost and I almost dismissed it in my rush to not need the things I can’t have. What is it to return to love in this moment with all this hard fought new selfhood in hand? Do you come as believer or skeptic? Are you wary and fearful or ready for rest?

Oh man, I was terrified to fall in love again. I didn’t plan to, either—I was really okay with being alone until I got closer to the person this poem is about. It was more the “falling in love” that brought forth this mental health crisis than the end of the toxicity. I truly had gotten so used to disarray that stability was viscerally terrifying to me. Despite all of this, I am a steadfast believer in love, and this person still reminds me of that every day.

Cobain sings “Maybe I’m dumb. I think I’m just happy.” and he doesn’t know, can’t tell the difference. Having read a thicket of weeds (there are still / pangs of delight deep in my guts > nearly stronger than any love i’ve felt in flesh) I wonder how much we need to examine the difference. All this overthinking. [insert the most unhinged D.A.R.E. ad from your childhood here] but I can’t be alone in wanting to wish the whole world away. To be oblivious in 2023? A blessing. Is the goal of all this to do all the thinking and finally break free to a non-thinking place? Is there a healed/complete that we aim for? A finish line after which we’ll be able to rest?

I never think of this journey as completable. If it is, I don’t think I know what it looks like yet. I don’t know that I seek total healing as much as I seek comfort. If I can at least be mostly comfortable and know how to cope, that can cover me when things get rough—and they will get rough. Life never stops, and hardship is a regretfully present aspect of disabled trans life. So I do feel like while I don’t have an endpoint or goal in mind, I strive to implement boundaries and coping strategies that carry me through difficulty.

Don't expect me to cry
Don't expect me to lie
Don't expect me to die
Don't expect me to cry
Don't expect me to lie
Don't expect me to die for me
(trad., Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For a Sunbeam)

Setting aside that we both know how well this statement played out, there’s so much in that last little ‘for me’ and I think it’s important. Reclaiming yourself and your health/worth as the end goal is such a huge hurdle. Over and over again this collection brings us back to moments where you’ve done other and been other for others and then pivots again to moment where you stood up for you. Two forward, one back, or however the line goes. Are you conscious of this recurrence throughout your writings? Does it get any easier to see in the moment which moves are for you?

I wouldn’t say I’m conscious of this in my writing, but I’m definitely conscious of it in my life. I know when I am doing something for myself—and that’s because it usually feels kind of uncomfortable after all this time being smaller for other people! I’m a chronic people-pleaser from a long line of chronic people-pleasers, and it’s really been something to try and unlearn that. Honestly, two steps forward and one step back is still a pretty fast rate of moving forward as far as I’m concerned. I’m so used to putting myself last that I consider putting myself first a tiny victory for my boundaries and self-worth.

The obligatory brain pick from editor to editor: you’ve published with kith, with Querencia, and as Fifth Wheel among others. How would you compare those experiences? What is it like to hand over to others what you do yourself?

I have generally been so excited to work with other editors on my books. While I do have a way that I like to do things, I’m also always appreciative of the ideas other editors have about my work. A perfect example is the cover of abyss—I had an idea of what I wanted, but I wasn’t able to execute it. Emily brought it to life in the best way imaginable. I feel similarly about my kith cover—there’s something nice about working with a creative person you trust when you don’t have a super specific vision in mind. I guess that’s why even though I have been self-publishing for as long as I’ve been making books, I still turn to other folks with my creative projects. Collaboration often draws out the strengths of the work, in my experience.