Today we’d like to introduce you to Zoe McKay.
Hi Zoe, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’m originally from the Dallas, Texas area but moved out to Georgia 10 years ago this month. In typical sapphic early 2010s fashion, I had a long distance girlfriend I met on Tumblr and u-hauled my way down to Columbus, GA, of all places, for a person I met in real life once prior.
At the time, not only was I 19 and in love, but I was living in a home environment that was homophobic, toxic, and even abusive at times – all because I was queer – and I had to find a way to get out, so I jumped at the opportunity to move. We didn’t last too long, about a year and a half, and when we broke up, I was left temporarily homeless. I alternated between sleeping in my car in the Columbus State University parking lot and couch surfing at a friend’s place. I did that for about 5-6 months, when my new girlfriend and a friend of ours found a house to rent. We moved in early 2015, and some of my fondest memories I have of Columbus took place around that time.
I ended up marrying that girlfriend, at the end of 2016, right after the election. We were already engaged – I had proposed during pride month – but we were scared of what was to come with the Trump administration. We eloped on our dating anniversary, and we thought everything was going to be okay moving forward. Little did I want to admit to myself, we shouldn’t have gotten married. She had a problem with alcohol, and we had an alcoholic roommate, so it was always around and available. One night, she got drunk enough that she blacked out and sexually assaulted me. It’s been years since this occurred, and I don’t blame her for what happened anymore. At the time, though? I struggled to realize what happened. I never brought it up, I convinced myself that it didn’t really happen. It was all in my head. She would never do that, inebriated or sober. I struggled with that secret for over a year. I suppressed the memory and the details, until I started remembering bits and pieces of it. We hadn’t been sexually active since the assault, and now I realized why that was. I escaped into alcohol, causing trouble for myself and others until that trouble caught up with me with a DUI arrest in 2018. I was ashamed and found solace in other people because I had a terrible view of myself. My wife found out about my emotional cheating and that when I unloaded and told her about what she did to me.
I don’t make excuses for my actions, however, I understand why I did what I did. The separation was pretty nasty, and we did a lot of counseling and therapy to try and understand each other’s feelings. We would go back and forth between fighting and apologizing. I started going to group meetings for survivors of sexual assault. Those meetings really helped with breaking down that I wasn’t alone, what happened to me wasn’t my fault, and that I had PTSD from it all. PTSD kind of inhibits your reasoning and decision-making skills. Unchecked, nearly every poor decision you make can almost be seen as a trauma response. Your emotions can be neglected and unchecked, and over time you take on riskier and riskier life choices, or you just shut down and be a shell of who you once were. I was dealing with both of those. They encouraged us to find a creative outlet to channel these feelings in, and I turned to poetry. As a kid, I enjoyed writing short stories, and my teachers encouraged me to use my voice for storytelling. I decided to write for myself and channel some of these feelings – anger, sadness, heartbreak. I bought a poetry and prose journal from Barnes & Noble to write these feelings down.
I don’t remember who exactly encouraged me to do so, but I created my poetry Instagram page sometime in early 2019. I also discovered a local coffee shop in downtown Columbus hosted open mic nights every other Thursday, so I decided to try it. I was so nervous to go up there – my voice was stammering so bad my first night. I invited a girl I was talking to, my best friend, and his girlfriend to come out and encourage me. Those Thursday nights kept me grounded, and gave me a reason to keep writing new material. I made a lot of friends from both open mic and my SA support group. I created a Facebook page linked to that Instagram account, so I could easily share it to my own Facebook since that where I have the biggest social media presence. I wrote about everything I was feeling – falling in love, falling out of love, emotional availability (or lack thereof), trauma, depression, queer issues. Things that were important to me as a whole, not just about processing my trauma. I learned a lot about myself in those early days, and I used some of what I was learning in therapy and with my writing to in a sense find closure with my ex-wife. When the pandemic started, I kind of got into a writing funk where it was hard to pull out of. The pandemic, BLM protests, the election…it seemed like everyone collectively was going through trauma, and I didn’t have the capacity to process it along with everything out. When the person I was seeing at the time broke up with me, I channeled those feelings back into writing again.
I ended up in ATL because of a breakup, and that’s actually how I ended up with writing my book. I was processing a lot of feelings from that breakup, and went on a writing spree to help find some closure. I did a writing challenge back in April and decided to fill it with some of my early work, along with the newer ones I have held to my chest and in my heart. This has been a collection that I’m super proud of, and I’m glad I’m able to bring my journey with love and loss to those who need help processing everything in it.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s definitely not been easy in any capacity. Processing trauma, loss, heartbreak, and depression. takes a LOT out of me emotionally. We are conditioned that vulnerability is a weakness, when in actuality its a strength. To have the courage to put yourself out there and be raw, authentic, and real – and not just with an audience, but with myself as well – I’m really proud of myself for that. Growth and change is never easy, however the support and love I’ve received from my friends, family, and followers helps ease that journey in growth for me.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a poet, more specifically an “internet poet”. I mainly use a line-break style format that’s easily digestible to read, but my topics are much more deep and emotionally vulnerable. I’m not one of those IG poets that does the whole “he was the moon, but I was the sun,” I love to play around with the concepts of the elements of nature: fire, water, air, and earth. Sometimes my use of imagery is just storytelling in a condensed format. I play around with different styles; not every poem reads the same. I’ll play around with iambic pentameter, haiku, metered; exploring different styles that fits the subject of the prose. My book, “The Bare Minimum of Decency”, showcases the variety of styles of expression. Each poem tells a different story, hits a bit differently, and reads uniquely depending on how the reader interprets it.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Most of my favorite memories as a kid surround vacations or trips I took with my dad. For a long time, my dad and I would spend a few weeks down in South Padre Island, TX, during the month of July. One of those trips, we would spend the morning at the beach, then go back to the hotel and go to the pool in the afternoon. We went golfing with a few of my dad’s friends a handful of times, we ate some of the best seafood I have ever had, we even went fishing off the pier. There was a snocone stand right before the bridge that connects Port Isabel with SPI, and we would go over there any time we went back and forth from the mainland. I use a lot of water and beach imagery in some of my works, and I love recalling those memories with my dad in order to put that into prose.
Pricing:
- Book “The Bare Minimum of Decency” – $6 at barnesandnoble.com
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @zampoetry93
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/ZAMpoetry
- Other: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bare-minimum-of-decency-zoe-mckay/1141620715
