7 Essays You Need To Read This Week: Gay Conversion Therapy, Addiction, And #BlackLivesMatter

Rushaa Louise Hamid shared her experience of living with vitiligo, an autoimmune disease that leaves colorless patches of skin on the body. Although she was comfortable in her own skin, the constant looks, the patronizing remarks, and society's beauty ideals were exhausting. Read her piece at BuzzFeed.

Kathryn Schulz, staff writer for The New Yorker, explored the linguistic phenomenon in which we use "no" to mean "yes." In her piece, she ponders the ever ambiguous "no" — is it a noun? an adjective? a adverb? — and how it actually "[expresses] the pleasure of emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual connection—or, for that matter, too many ways to simply say yes." Read her fascinating investigation at The New Yorker.

Kenny Porpora, author of The Autumn Balloon, wrote a powerful piece on being addicted to an abusive partner and his realization that a relationship could be self-destructive. "Wanting to hold Brad one more time was no different than my uncle needing that one more fix, or my mother needing that one more drink," he writes. Read his story at BuzzFeed LGBT.

Liz Prato, author of Baby's on Fire, wrote a horrifying yet poignant essay on finding out her now deceased father raped two women and previously abused her brother. How do you make peace with the death of the loved one after finding out he was a monster? Read her gripping story at The Toast.

Baron Vaughn plays an African man who has been adopted into a Jewish-American family on Netflix's upcoming original series Grace and Frankie. It's a role that probably wouldn’t have existed as an option for him in the past. For BuzzFeed Ideas, Vaughn wrote about the frustrations of working in an industry with a limited range of role portrayals for actors of color and how that is changing today. Read his essay at BuzzFeed Ideas.

BuzzFeed LGBT editor Patrick Strudwick went undercover in the U.K. to expose therapists who attempt to "cure" gay people. His shocking experiences reveal why President Obama is right to call for a ban against this practice. "The reality of what conversion therapy is, and what it could do to people, hit. The ideology, that homosexuality must be caused by early psychological damage, means those who adhere to it will find such damage – whether or not it is there," he writes. Read his story at BuzzFeed News.