Therapy #3

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THERAPY ZINE: issue three, November 2019 Created/Edited/Curated & Cover Art by Frankie Francesco Creative Director: Victoria Prevost

CONTACT: Website: FrankieFrancescoArt.com Email: FrankieFrancescoArt@gmail.com Insta, Twitter & FB: @TherapyZine Youtube: Youtube.com/channel/UCx9C6rnPgKTXnfHpQVD9i2g Support Us: Patreon.com/TherapyZine Published by The Therapy Zine Group, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States Copyright 2019 Frankie Francesco/The Therapy Zine Group. All Rights Reserved to featured creators.

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CREATORS Frankie Francesco

Jaycie Weeks

Brittany Bourland

@formugs

@jayy_double_u

@bourlando

Savannah Francesco

David Baeza

Linneas Boland - Godbey

@143crossmyheart

@elboogieman

@linneasbg

A Million On My Soul - Alexiane Disparate Youth - Santigold Hate Me - Ellie Goulding & Juice WRLD Alien Boy - Oliver Tree Dagashiyashoubai - Kenshi Yonezu Alaska - Maggie Rogers Cruel Love - Kayzo Bruises - Lewis Capaldi Walk On Water - Eminem (feat. Beyonce) Saturday Nights - Khalid Beyond Doubt - Gene Loves Jezebel The Leshan Buddha - Abominable OST Jodie Knowlton

Barbara Gomez

Merrick

@jodielocks

@boiledink

@meralienart

Charles Neworth

Tre Wilson

Sariah Jackson

@charles_neworth_art

@t.storm.arts

@sariahcraft

River Bennett

Briana Santarsieri

@rvr.photo

@briiielizabeth_

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Letter From Editor I wrote and rewrote this letter multiple times, questioning what I should include, or not include. I’d like to start by saying a lot has changed since our last issue. In my own personal life and even the future of Therapy, but I’ll get back to that. So I decided to write something this issue, besides just my usual letter for you guys. Felt it was necessary, If you haven’t read Therapy: Journals (a spin-off one time solo project.) Then you don’t know I’ve been in a dark place. My depression came back and I didn’t know how to cope. I’d hope that I can say I’m truly getting to the point of happiness, with only waves of depression now. I appreciate my family and friends, those who understood that I needed to do this. The one emotion that’s hard to let go of is anger.

I ended an almost seven year relationship, went on a solo camping trip, and publicly released a very personal song of mine. In past issues I’ve hidden my music in linked pages. I was too afraid to just outright share them, what the hell though. They may not be to my standard of “good” just yet, but we all start somewhere. So enjoy, they are now public on soundcloud. (Such a terrifying thought.) I honestly wasn’t even gonna talk about any of this, I felt like it made me seem weak in some way. The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that my sadness or anger isn’t weakness. I wondered why I even felt this way in the first place. Realizing it was instilled in me. Programmed to feel guilty about showing any type of emotion. So let’s just say “fuck that toxic-masculinity bullshit!” Start to heal, and just try to be happy bout the future.

Getting back to Therapy though, I truly am excited to be back for issue THREE. We are doing it y’all! This is happening, and it’s still just the beginning. We have so many plans and ideas for the future. We wanna start hosting events, collaborating, and doing get togethers. We wanna get to know you “IRL” so to speak. So go and discover something that speaks to you in this issue. I’d like you to find something hopeful and reflect. Choose to turn your pain into growth instead of becoming hardened by what has happened. Cause we all deserve to be happy, so breathe and choose to be.

(@formugs)

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Contents INTRO & CREATORS....

LETTER FROM EDITOR & TOC....

TRE WILSON....

BRIANA SANTARSIERI....

RIVER BENNETT....

SAVANNAH FRANCESCO....

FRANKIE FRANCESCO....

PUZZLES....

BRITTANY BOURLAND....

DAVID BAEZA....

JAYCIE WEEKS....

LINNEAS BOLAND-GODBEY....

JODIE KNOWLTON...

CHARLES NEWORTH....

EVENTS/GROUPS...

SARIAH JACKSON....

MERRICK....

BARBARA GOMEZ...

THANK YOU/HELP....

2-3 4-5 6-8 9 10-11 12 13, 32-35 14-15 16-17 18-19 20-21 22-24 25 26 27 28 29 30-31 35

Disclaimer: views, thoughts, images, writings and opinions expressed in the following zine belong solely to that creator, and not necessarily to every 5 artist involved in The Therapy Zine Group, etc.

Tre Wilson (@t.storm.arts)

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Tre Wilson (@t.storm.arts)

Music You Can Feel Bri Santarsieri

Tell me you’ll stay and make me feel like always It’s gonna be alright, I’m never gonna leave your side You’re running through my dreams, it’s like you’re on repeat Walk away, hope to god you don’t find a way to break me You’ve left before but I thought you’d come back to me Will our stars ever align, will two hearts beat in time She’s like a Skrillex song that never drops She’ll never talk, she’ll never talk about the feelings that she felt today I know you care, so tell me that you do You’re pulling me deeper, deeper, till I’m broken Rush over me one more time, I will miss you Run away, I’ll understand The angel of death is ruthless I guess love took on a different kind of meaning for me So when I go just know it kills me to leave It’s time for me to breathe, I’m gasping for the air you stole from me I’m better off, I’m better off, I’m better Hit play, hit play, it’s the sound of walking away

Contributing Lyrics Playlist:

Always - The Him Falls - ODESZA Alone - I Prevail Walk Away - Cory Wells Break My Heart - Valentina My Heart I Surrender - I Prevail Creve Coeur 1 - Hobo Johnson I Know You Care - Ella Vos Ocean - Ella Vos Rush Over Me - Seven Lions x ILLENIUM x Said the Sky An Evening I Will Not Forget - Dermot Kennedy Outnumbered - Dermot Kennedy Lost - ILLENIUM Sound of Walking Away - ILLENIUM 9

River Bennet (@rvr.photo)

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It Comes In Waves

by Savannah Francesco

I can’t breathe,

I’m drowning but there’s no water.

this weight sits on my chest crushing me.

I’m screaming for help & no one is listening.

If I’m gone maybe they will finally hear me, and feel what it’s like to drown without water.

Or maybe it’s me who’s drowning them, and they will be able breathe again.

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“---And I’m alone in bed...

His conversations in my head.

Wondering about that time his hand touched mine.”

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DOWN 1. Persecutions against homosexuality rose during the High Middle Ages, reaching their height during the _____________ Inquisitions.

3. Mexican, bisexual, Communist, feminist has become one of the best-known artists of all time.

4. The personal sense of one’s own gender. ______ _______can correlate with assigned sex at birth or can differ from it.

6. __________ Individuals have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from their assigned sex.

7. Scholar Pan Guangdan, came to the conclusion that nearly every emperor in the _____ _________ had one or more male sex partners.

9. When someone living with ___ is on treatment and achieves an undetectable viral load, the risk of transmitting the virus is almost zero.

ACROSS 2. Bisexual _________ is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or reexplain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources. In its most extreme form, bisexual erasure can include the belief that bisexuality does not exist.

5. __________ is an American comic book series published by DC Comics and written by Steve Orlando that ran for twelve issues. The comic marked the first time a gay man was the protagonist in an ongoing series released by one of the “Big Two” comic book publishers 8. Under the rule of ____ ________ about 50,000 men were sentenced because of their homosexuality and thousands of them died in concentration camps. Conditions for gay men in the camps were especially rough; they faced not only persecution from German soldiers, but also other prisoners, and many gay men were reported to die of beatings.

10. ________ (an umbrella term) are individuals born with sex characteristics (including genitals, gonads and chromosome patterns) that do not fit “typical binary notions” of male or female bodies.

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1. Medieval, 2. Erasure, 3. Frida Kahlo, 4.Gender Identity, 5. Midnighter, 6.Transgender, 7. Han Dynasty, 8. Nazi Germany, 9.HIV, 10. Intersex

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Things About Me

by Brittany Bourland I began writing this as an attempt to see all the things I think about myself on paper in hopes that these things would start to make more sense. And maybe I can more accurately explain why I do the things I do, or feel the things I feel; but the problem is that I feel everything... I feel everything. I can imagine the struggles and footsteps of a drug addict, a grieving mother. Producing goosebumps on my arms for every commercial with Sarah McLaughlin; making tears cascade to the pavement like empty bullets when her voice starts to crack...

I feel everything.

I find comfort in disregarded thrift store puzzles, because there is always at least one piece missing. It reminds me of my entire adolescence. It’s much like my love life; you catch a glimpse of the diamond in the rough. You get excited because it’s such a good deal that you can’t help but be drawn to it. Open the lid -- scatter the pieces on the dining room table. Begin to create the bigger picture. You’re almost there. But right there -- at the finish line. The box is empty. There’s nothing left. You’re sitting there with nothing left to do but compile the pieces back into the box, and stick it on the shelf. She put me back on her shelf.

I love sarcasm because I do not pick up on sarcasm. I use sarcasm as a tool after I’ve mauled over a structured sentence, which used sarcasm in an attempt to comprehend the original sarcasm. But if you actually use sarcasm before I have a chance to dissect the words, I don’t pick up on it. So I smile and wait, just until the moment passes and the subject changes. I silently replay every word you just said to detect which parts you were serious about.

My brain ticks in concentric, circles of routine like clockwork. If I’m mopping the floor at my job, I’ve already counted every tile before combing over it and I remember how many strokes it took to get it clean. The rest of the outside world becomes a motionless haze until I go from start to finish.

I wasn’t ignoring you, I promise.

I just wasn’t really there.

When you’re the team captain, the honor roll student, and have friends to hang out with on the weekends, no one suspects you could possibly be plagued with the white elephant of autism, as this is not what autism “looks like.” I don’t have sensory issues with being hugged, I don’t slam my head into walls. I don’t fit into the box everyone with media overexposure throws at the front page. Sometimes I wish I did because this silence is deafening.

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I have long pauses of stares; into a world that is all my own, where I’m releasing every demon from its cage. Tearing my brain-stem from its base, and throwing it over the fence like a World Series grand slam. I am screaming in a crowded room; “GET OUT OF ME!” But it’s never just me, I look in the mirror and I see two people. One of them looks like me, and the other looks like misunderstood sentiments and therapists who gave up.

Algebra didn’t make sense to me, because there were letters with it. Because my letters looked like scars, and just like that equation and I, they didn’t look right together. I tried to isolate the variable by cutting the bad parts out of me. But no one wants to hear that story. No one wants to solve for X; so I carved it, and I found it. I finally found X. The best way to make me never want to know you, is for me to show you a song and you talk through it. I am filled with both sides of every situation, because …

I FEEL EVERYTHING! I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU FEEL THE WAY YOU FEEL, BUT THE OTHER ME DOES NOT UNDERSTAND HOW THAT POSSIBLY MAKES SENSE IN YOUR HEAD! I am a hypocrite. I want to be left alone, but I am terrified of being lonely.

“I need space” only means I’m too much. And even though I know I’ve had twenty years of space without you... I can’t fathom why you need more, but I want to be left alone. Shutting down for me is finding an alternate personality who doesn’t care about much. Won’t text you back, will hit on your friend, will make you feel as insecure as others make me feel. Most people who meet her will like her more than me, and sometimes she wins, which kills me. Because she’s not really me, not the me I like, not the me I believe. But maybe parts of me need her to keep from drowning, because she has the guts to forge her own raft. And all I was equipped with was a lifesaver in my chest. I thought it was enough, but it deflated with every closed door.

I learned how to save myself when I asked for help and they told me to pray about it.

It’s fucked up that I feel guilty for admitting that. At this point... If God isn’t already disappointed in me, He wasn’t there anyway. People like me... Or maybe it’s just me?

Find the one who’s worth it, offers their favorite hoodie, and still feel warm as we shiver. I know I should layer up, but that girl.

She makes you believe it’s okay to be bare.

And I fall for it...

Everytime.

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David Baeza (@elboogieman)

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by Jaycie Weeks To begin this game review, let me start out by saying that the Legend of Zelda series is one of my top favorite game series. I even dedicated my first tattoo to Twilight Princess! The franchise has always had a special place in my heart, and when I heard that Nintendo was going to remaster Link’s Awakening, I instantly knew that I had to get it. However, I did not know what to expect, which heightened my excitement in a way. I never played the original version, and I honestly had no idea about anything of the game, except for the fact that it was a “new” Zelda, and I had to play it.

where to go next, plot-wise. I don’t know if that’s due to having a small map, or not much to offer in general, but I found myself having to look up a few aspects of where to go next in the storyline since there wasn’t very much information on what to do next. There are some side quests that were very entertaining (I was so upset when I completed the trading sequences), but towards the end of the game, it felt more like a chore to complete, rather than an anticipated ending.

While the game is definitely cute, I think that I should have done my own personal research on what to expect for the game, and I think it would have made me enjoy it a little bit more. I am used to the dungeons of Zelda being extremely challenging and complex and full of substance, and the screen-to-screen layout of Link’s Awakening dungeons removed all of those dungeon elements for me, which was a disappointment in itself.

When I first started the game, the first thing I noticed was how cute it was.

Windwaker was the first Zelda game that got me into the franchise, and it definitely gave me an appreciation for the more cartoony art style with the series. Link’s Awakening starts in a small village, where you have to basically search around to find the first dungeon to save one of the villagers. The beginning of the game was very much enjoyable, and it was definitely different -- whether that’s due to the age of the game, or the plot itself, I’m not too sure. However, once I got to the third dungeon of the game, it started to get a little… stale.

Overall, Link’s Awakening is a good game, and I am definitely glad I played it. There isn’t a Zelda game on this planet that I do not want to play. However, I think that I gave Link’s Awakening too much hype, as the last new Zelda game that I had to look forward to was Breath of the Wild (which I definitely loved, but it’s been a while). Naturally, when anything is given too much hype, it is only normal for the product to fall short, and I know that is my fault. I recommend all Zelda lovers to check out Link’s Awakening, as it does have many Zelda elements we all have come to love and enjoy, but make sure you know what you are expecting before spending full retail on the game.

The main reservation that I have about Link’s Awakening is that the storyline is definitely lacking. For gamers like me who really prioritize a good story, that tends to affect my opinion on all other aspects of the game: gameplay, difficulty, and replay value. Link’s Awakening does have some interesting aspects to its plot, there isn’t very much guidance on

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tattoo by Jasmine Lazares -Parrish (@minty.sprinty_tattoos)

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Model: (@tolly_kiteboy)

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When Crazy Walks Back In

by Jodie Knowlton

When crazy walks back in do you push it back out the door or invite it in?

I decided to invite it back in.

To tell them how crazy they actually are.

To tell it how much it ruined my life.

To tell it to never come back.

But the thing is, you can’t control crazy.

How can you tell crazy to go away if it doesn’t allow you to speak?

How can you tell them that they’re crazy when they’re telling you about how they almost died, and saved someone? How do you get away when crazy tells you that they can keep you “safe,” But in the same breath say they can use “their people” to find you?

Frightened by the thought...

But now this is my own fault for thinking I could invite crazy back in, and throw them out on my own accord. What’s crazier is how long crazy was in my life and I thought they were normal.

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Charles Neworth (@charles_neworth_art)

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Mental Illness is just a taboo in my country. It’s either you’re normal or schizophrenic. There’s no such thing as depression, anxiety attacks nor other personality disorders. Everything is just in your head so deal with it. This is the knife I kept on stabbing myself. And then, it came... my first confrontation with myself. Do I want to live? Do I want to die? It was a choice some people like me have to deal with every day. The choice to die and deal with the consequences of the afterlife including not being with the ones I love most or the choice to live and deal with everyday dreadful plans of fate for me.

I chose the latter because I am strong (or trying to be at least). I chose the harder choice of living with this “thing in my head”. I must say there were better times when I thought maybe I’m healed but I finally came to a realization that will never happen. No one heals. There’s always a scar. There’s always a reminder that you gotta make a choice. That choice is my power. My choice is to live and appease. Appease my own episodes through arts. Appease my mental illness through making something out of it. I will never heal but I will never succumb to my illness. Art is my maintenance drug.

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Merrick (@meralienart)

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STRANGERS

by Frankie Francesco

The strangers I find come, they bring me offerings of semen, tainted kisses, and a false sense of intimacy.

It’s odd, It’s addicting, the taste, the smell, the rush.

Making me feel alive, collecting their saliva in my mouth. I see them, studying their bodies, each one so different but equally enticing. Putting my tongue, hands and other organs in their most private places.

Familiarizing myself with each one, I help them expel the primal. Do they see me, even for just a second? Are we memorizing the same material? Or is this just a solo project?

I wrap my arms around them, allowing them to express things they wouldn’t tell their closest allies.

I’m theirs until the sun comes up, then they’re gone.

Though I’m incapable of forgetting what they were.

Attempting to exorcise it, forcing myself to remember them as just a piece of pulsating flesh, nothing more.

I’m not wired that way though. As uncomfortable, passionate, brief or awkward the moment was...

Whether they know or feel it, they’re a part of me now.

Part of my story, no longer strangers.

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Frankie Francesco (@formugs)

My beard’s getting scraggly, also I quit smoking again. a playlist by Frankie Francesco

The Curse - Agnes Obel Cry For You* - Leo Gold Under Your Spell - Desire Habits (Stay High) - Tove Lo Nothing Where Something Used To Be - Vanessa Carlton Their Cell - Girl In A Coma I’ll Always Love You, Frank - Shaolin Hunks Without Me - Halsey Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths Tonya Harding - Sufjan Stevens Where Is My Mind - Pixies Hope There’s Someone - Antony & the Johnsons *** Paul - Big Thief Shut Up Kiss Me - Angel Olsen

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Thanks for joining us again for our third issue. It has been so great getting to meet and share these awesome creators. This zine has become so much more than we expected it too. The letters and messages we receive (no matter how seldom they are.) Genuinely fill our hearts, sometimes creating this zine can start to feel unfulfilling. Receiving that feedback makes it all worth it though. Be sure to keep an eye on our social media, we plan to start events here soon, and would love for you to be a part of them.

- The Therapy Group

National Suicide Prevention Hotline

1-800-273-8255

Trans Lifeline

1-877-565-8860 35

THERAPY issue three: If you haven’t read Therapy before we are a queer zine. Created by Frankie Francesco bringing together passionate, timid, experienced, & amateur creators of various talents. A place of growth & self-expression, absolutely free of judgment. Join The Therapy Group where you’re not only welcome, but you are celebrated. Find your voice with us as we find ours, submissions are always welcome.

FrankieFrancescoArt@gmail.com // @TherapyZine Copyright © 201936 Frankie Francesco