Little girls grow up with Disney
And all your life Disney girls have been found by their princes
All your life you have waited for your prince but time and again he has not shown up
Then suddenly, here he is, and he is nothing like you expected
All he wants to do is play video games, ignore you and he never ever shaves
You try to do what Disney princesses do but now it just doesn’t feel like it should but you go through the motions because he is the only one who showed up
Then you meet another Disney girl, except she is nothing like you expected she never waits for what she wants, and she makes you feel like yourself again
You realize that you don’t need to wait for your prince any longer for your princess has been here all along

I have spent  my entire life at war with my body
Raised in a home, where pretty is small
And if you weren't you weren’t much at all
Two years ago, I found my sister’s diet journal
Her bulimic blog, her anorexic aesthetic
For some reason skinny is important
Society has trained little girls with big dreams and big thighs
To cut themselves in half, then fold themselves 26 times
To achieve model perfection, size zero you are my hero
Little girls,I will tell you this, something you will hear a thousand times but never enough
It does not matter what size you are, how thick your thighs, how tight your mother’s dress is around your waist
You are not your body
You are much more than your body
That is just a mere covering to hold your greatness
Your body will rebel when you mistreat it
Like when your cat ran away when you forgot to feed it
Your stomach will cave in, your bright eyes will sink , your hair will fade and dry, your muscles will wither
I know that it’s hard, it’s hard to stop thinking when you can only think in the form of crunching numbers
When you couldn’t stop counting calories to save your life
When all you wanted to do is be skinny or die
And even when you achieve that goal, you look in the mirror and you still look the same, you still look like that fat girl who ruined your life, you’re still are the girl that nobody likes
Habits are hard to get rid of
Like how you bite your nails and tap your toes
I know how hard it is to stop but you must stop, you are killing yourself you are stunting the growth of your greatness
Little girls with big dreams, no matter what your size, YOU matter not your body

Tell me something you want to know
Watch my feelings for you grow and grow
Hold me tight, day and night
Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine
Proving our love is real from the dawn of time
See your lips quiver, your backbone shiver
Give me sight, to see the light
Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine
Baby, this is your time to shine
Who cares what the other’s will say?
No one will stand in our way
Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine
Anything is okay, everything is fine
They’ll hear me roar, then they’ll know for sure
That she is mine and I am hers
Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine
God says Eve was made from Adam’s rib bone
No, she was born of golden sunshine
Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine

You never know what lurks in the darkness
I lurk in the darkness you don’t want them to see you so you hide your face, you hide your feelings you hide who you are
You don’t want them to see you
But I see you because I am here too
We are hiding for different reasons through different seasons
We hide in the dark because it feels safe
When the living room becomes an unwelcome space
And everything you say is wrong
And everything you do is just another reason for someone to judge you and blame you for things that you can’t control
And the fact that nobody liked you, until you stopped saying things that you really meant and started saying things that they wanted you say
And started acting like they wanted you to act and every day becomes another reason to hate yourself, another punch on a punchcard that you're going to heaven unlike those other kids like you who didn’t keep their mouths shut
But I am done standing in the shadows, done keeping my mouth shut
So do what you will, but now there's only you

Your mother and you have arrived, you sit on the sofa belonging to your stepfathers aunt
You know the names of everyone in the room, but they do not know you
The men ignore you, the ladies ignore you, except to tell you they like what you’ve done with your hair
Your mother is glued to your side, sitting as close to you as she possibly can
You go down stairs with the little kids even though you are old enough to have conceived one of your own
At least you would think that they would accept you as their own but no they have picked up the cues from their parents who didn’t realize they were giving
What a joy it is living in such a small, small  town
Expensive couch pillows stuffed with down
And then before you know it the food is done, the real reason your mother insisted you go
Not to listen to small-minded chatter or to watch the ladies show off their new babies and the ever present football game on tv screen that is a necessity
Now it is time to say grace, you stand in the same spot you have stood  in every year copying what your mother does, wondering if anyone here ever thinks about jesus at this time
You would think that the floorboards would have sunk for every time you have stood in this spot but no the floorboards gleam the scene is pristine the turkey shines
The food they remind you took money and time infused with just a hint of lime
Whether you like it or not this is family
You have to love your family
Even if they don’t know your here, your uncle is filled with beer
Even though you spend the entire rest of the day alone and down
This is your family in your small small town

These are the years of skinny jeans and sadness
Of black eyeliner and blackouts
Surviving high school high on hunger
The only way to cure an anorexic is realization
Realization that maybe those five strawberries you’re eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner weren't  as healthy as they were before you started counting them as calories
Realization that maybe you shouldn’t have binged everything in the house then threw up
Realization that maybe you should just burn your diet journal with the rest of your habits
Becoming anorexic will give you a new vocabulary, with words such as binge, purge and thinspiration
Your mind will become a calculator counting every calorie as a new way to punish yourself for being a size six
Let me tell you there is nothing wrong with your body, but there is something wrong with your mind
Even when you reach your goal it will not be enough until you are a size smaller
Until you can see your ribs
Until bones is all that's left of you
Until your dead

My mother thinks my father killed himself
He was crushed to death
I don’t know how
I was never told
But I’ve come to understand that his death might not have been accidental
According to my mother
He had a few mere seconds of unbearable pain before he passed
At the funeral while my family mourned
I wondered how anyone could look so lifeless and feel so cold
I was four
He looked like he was in a soundless slumber
Having the most pleasant peaceful dream
After the funeral
A blonde haired women glared at me as I started to cry
I never knew her name
Years later I would only know my father by his old t-shirts my mother would wear to bed
As my mother spun out of control
I spun on the merry-go round wondering why life was so cold
As I spun, empty and motionless
Six year old me would see a father pushing his girls on the swing set
Only I would find that unbearable to see
A year later, when I am seven a new father comes along
He is nice, at first
three months later
He is your stepfather
The only one you could ever remember
The one you wish you could forget
Years later you’ll keep his secrets
And he’ll tell all yours
My mother thinks my father killed himself
Sometimes you’ll wish he didn’t