For The Girl Who has been assaulted...

Some days, I feel strong.
Some days I’m empowered and I know that I did the best I could.
Some days I take pride in the way I’ve reconstructed myself after the hardest moments I’ve experienced.
Some days, I’m weak.
Some days, I’m angry.
Some days I’m just plain fucking pissed off.
Some days, I’m happy.
Some days, I love myself.
Some days, I hate myself.
Some days, I hate you. All of you. Everyone who has ever made me feel like I didn’t own the rights to my body.

I’d love to tell you it only happened once. I’d love to tell you that I filed a police report, that we went to court and he went to jail. But it didn’t, and I didn’t, and we didn’t, and he didn’t.

None of those statements are what my reality looked like. Truthfully, that’s not what most of our realities look like. The truth is, most of the time we are too afraid/scared/paralyzed to ever report what happened to us. We see the stigma. We see the news reports of the people who spend no jail time, of the cases that get dropped, of the victim blaming. And we feel defeated. We think there’s no way we can ever feel whole again.

Those of us who have lived that life or walked in those shoes know the hopelessness of it all. We know the nightmares, we remember the trauma. We know what it’s like to wake up in a cold sweat, filled with so much fear that we think we’re back in that same moment again. We live with this, we do our best, and we carry on.

This one goes out to you.

Episode 8 - Is into Spooky Stuff

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Episode 7 - Lived in a Haunted House

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For The Girl Who lived in a haunted house

The light was barely shining in my room through the unlatched door. A heavy door, with a handle that looked like it was crafted by hand in the late 1800’s. There was a keyhole but no key as far as I ever knew, and a latch-lock mechanism on the inside. It wasn’t exactly the typical door you would see on the bedroom of a small child. It seemed ancient. Everything in that house did. 

My eyes were barely open when I caught a glimpse of a figure out of the corner of my eye. Had the door been fully closed, I don’t think I would have noticed. I tried my best to rationally reason where the figure was coming from. Laundry on my dresser, I thought. No, that wasn’t it. The shape didn’t add up. I sat still for what felt like hours and just stared. I blinked and tried to re-focus my eyes. The figure was getting clearer. Tall, thin, with a hat that looked like it belonged atop Zorro’s head. “I must be dreaming,” I thought. I blinked again, and then it started to move. Toward me. Quickly. I didn’t close my eyes, I didn’t look away, I just screamed. Before he could get to me, my door swung open. Mom. And poof: he was gone. Already knowing the deal, mom climbed in bed with me. “It’s okay, baby. Go back to sleep.” 

I was 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 and I can’t tell you which one because this was an almost nightly occurrence in my house. I don’t have any clear memories of a night I spent in that house that did not result in me waking up, at one point or another, screaming. My mom would crawl in my bed, dreary and half-asleep, and lay with me until I returned to slumber.  

For this experience, I was awake. But many of my terrors in that house happened while I slept. I began having nightmares at a very young age. I don’t remember exactly when they started, because it felt like it was just normal to have these experiences. I didn’t always wake up screaming in the beginning, or so I’ve been told. I remember as a small child telling my mom that I needed to wake up from the nightmares before they got too scary, and I couldn’t figure out how to wake myself up. She told me to scream. Close my eyes and scream at the top of my lungs in my dreams, and I’d wake up. 

It worked...for a while. Eventually my dreams figured out that this was my escape route, and they learned. They adjusted. I would close my eyes, wail as loud as I could muster, open my eyes and still be in the same hellish nightmare. I remember having dreams where I screamed for what felt like eternity before I finally woke up. 

I swore I was sick. Something had to be wrong with me. It wasn’t normal to have these nightmares every single night. Something was just...off. I never thought I'd get a restful nights’ sleep. That was, until we moved away. And the nightmares went away. And other members of my family admitted they, too, had seen the mysterious Zorro-looking man. It took several years of anxiety that they would someday return for me to realize that the nightmares weren’t because of me. There was no evil that resided in my soul, that spilled out through my subconscious and into my dreamland. I wasn't hallucinating. There was never anything wrong with me. 

It was the house. 

Episode 6- Is the Fat Friend

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For the Girl Who is the Fat Friend

You ever look around a table and realize you are different from everyone else in some obvious way? You realize the chairs hurt your ass and the waitress offers you, specifically, dessert. Do people go out of their way to tell you how beautiful you are...despite your size? Do your friends only ask to borrow your shoes?

You are probably the fat friend.

There is nothing wrong with being the fat friend. I'm the fat friend! I'm cute, I'm funny, I have great stories, I'm great at makeup, I'm artistic and I happen to be fat. 

My friends really don't make a big deal about this fact. They know my story. They know my weight is a very touchy point for me. However, it's a part of who I am, part of my day to day. It makes a difference to where I go, what I wear, how comfortable I'm going to be. 

Are there stairs? How many? I don't want to be the one winded bitch when we get to our destination. How is the seating? Am I going to feel like the chairs were designed for children? Will my ass be numb before the drinks arrive?

It can be exhausting hearing about other friends struggle with self image and weight, when you see them as skinny and gorgeous. Being insecure and struggling with yourself image seems to be given for the us.  But that's what I've learned as the fat friend, everyone has insecurities behind their smile. We all have our struggles. We are not alone, even when you're the fat friend.

Has Been Girl Hated

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For The Girl Who has been hated...

If you’ve attended high school, lived past 15 years old, or had any kind of relationship with anyone, you can probably relate. 

 

I think we’ve all been there at one point or another. Someone had something shitty to say about you, spread a rumor, and suddenly you’ve got a whole gang of people who think things about you that are not only likely untrue, but also hurtful and offensive.  

 

I’d like to tell you that we can avoid this problem by being the best version of ourselves that we can be, but honestly, I don’t believe that. In my experience, we can try as hard as possible, keep our heads up, be completely honest, and inevitably we will still end up in experiences where the finger is pointing at us. These situations feel more hopeless than I care to even relay to you. When you’ve been made to be the bad guy in a position where you’re only trying to protect yourself, or maybe you thought you were doing the best you could and somehow, you’re still blamed for the downfall of others.  

 

I've spent the better portion of my 26 years trying to be the one to make other people happy, and seldom has it gotten me to a place of contentment. More often than not, when you spend so much time trying to change yourself to fit the mold of others, they expect the change to be greater: bigger, broader, more consuming. Not only can you lose yourself in this process, but it hardly gets you to where you think you want to be. I’ve found that the more that people want me to change to suit their needs, the more they are lacking within themselves.  

 

Because I’ve made a career of being whoever people want me to be, this leaves a lot of room for error when it comes to my true personality. For many years, every person I interacted with saw a different version of myself, and that caused serious misconceptions about who I am as an individual. Not just in other people’s eyes, but in my own. In turn, I find myself getting called fake. Shady. Liar. I guess if you were to look at the situation objectively, I could see how all these things are true. My intentions were pure, but my actions couldn’t have possibly reflected that.

 

I have been hated for this. I have been exiled from friend groups. I have been drug through the mud, pushed in front of a car (literally), and persecuted. I won’t try and excuse it; there was a huge lack of honesty. But there was never malice.  

 

This is a very small example in the grand scheme of things. There have been many more reasons I have been hated. Some of them justified, some of them not. But here’s where we are today: 

 

Hate me if you will. It no longer affects me. 

 

I’ve finally reached a point in my life where I am no longer willing to change myself for the benefit of others. I’m unwilling to be the person you think you need of me. I have enough to offer as who I am today, and if that’s not enough for you, that’s fine. I’m not in the business of wearing different hats anymore. That life is over. 

 

Self-awareness and respect have led me here. I meet every situation with as much sincerity as possible, and I know I am an honest individual with pure intentions. You don’t have to believe that; I’m unconcerned. I will never intentionally hurt, but I certainly won’t beg you to believe me. And if you still want to hate me, you’re welcome to it.