Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love

by Jonathan Van Ness

If my passion for life was a flame, so many people were trying to figure out how to douse water on it—but I kept it burning within myself. No amount of homophobic, misogynistic fuckery was going to pull me out of that.

All I had to lose was the moment, and a moment is something that we should never let go to waste.

I’m not sure what it is—if it’s God-given, if it’s my chemistry, if it’s the nature or the nurture—but my whole life, becoming obsessed with something made me pass the time in all sorts of joyous ways.

Survivors deserve to have self-expression, self-confidence, self-acceptance, and an unstigmatized view from society. Pervasive abuse continues to happen because there is a feeling that you can’t talk about it because it is hard and uncomfortable to do so. But just like joy and pain coexist, so can discomfort and humor. Which is why you gotta buckle up, buttercup, because I can go from comedy to tragedy in three seconds flat.

He was such a gorgine specimen. An Adonis in our midst. The most Dorito-shaped hold-me-till-the-pain-goes-away then run-me-over-in-your-car then resurrect-me-with-your-perfect-square-shaped-yet-spherical-endlessly-hard-meat pecs I’ve ever seen.

The power we assign to people is the power we give them—it

being strong and masculine has everything to do with having the courage and audacity to be different. It’s such a better way to be a man—bold and courageous—than squashing it down and trying to fit into a very basic idea of how men are supposed to be.

At the end of the day, the people we let in our space affect our ability to get to where we want to go, so if they’re in the way of realizing your potential, it’s okay to disconnect because you must choose yourself. I used to think that was selfish but really it’s just healthy.

You miss 100 percent of the chances you don’t take.

we are never too broken to heal.