I live to defy what you taught me.


"Girls are weak"

I received the message. I rejected it.

With my chubby arms, the arms of a child, I picked up the table, twice my size, and carried it across the

yard,

forest,

desert,

ocean,

wherever it needed to go.

I basked in adult adoration of my strength. My sharp look scorching all who dared to offer assistance.

Kindness or a sense of superiority- motive be dammed.

I've grown up with the world as my witness.

I've learned to never ask for help.


"Girls are emotional"

Emotions are a weakness, for you think of girls as weak.

I must not be weak, for the world is watching.

And so, I've locked in the drawer of my mind every troubling thoughts, every emotion.

They are still there, unreachable. Rotting.


I grew up to be numb.

I grew up to be a hypocrite.

I would preach about the health benefits of crying. I would be horrified to listen to myself.

Forbidden to even share my passions by my own brain.

I'm fine-

I'm a mess-

at the same breath.

One is the lashing out of self defense,

The other is a painful admittance.

One is happily uttered when they catch my face,

The other is shamed and condemned.


I've grown up strong in every toxic sense of the word.

In my pursuit to defy what you dictated for me, I live my life as you dictated for yourself.


If the facade will ever go, it will not shatter nor dissappear.

If I will dictate my own life for myself, it will take as long as the rebuilding of the world.

My vains, they're coursing with ink from all the words I did not say, from all the details about me I did not care to share.

Because what could I say to make you understand the pain of hiding me away?



The boulder of emotion that drops down and ignites the empty hole where my heart should be every time you speak of a future that I would rather not have at all than go along with your plans.



The flinch I suppress whenever you speak of a husband or kids that I would be forced to bear in your oh so pink future,

Pink that is so bright in your eyes but dark and dripping in mine.


The decision I make as my hands dig into my chest in an attempt to reach up into my heart and relieve the pain of being ashamed of what I am- of who I am.

It's becoming too much!


The waiting
for the perfect moment to let the ink pour from my tongue all over your too clean floor.


The fear of your reaction knowing your liberal approach is only for what you've been taught is right to love and wrong to hate, knowing that you do not want to learn and believe in anything you deem as new.



The step back I take as I ask myself;
"Is it really worth it?"

Telling myself that I don't owe you ****.

You have sowed the seeds of self hate with your casual heteronormativity in my mind and now you have no right to its flowers whose colorful petals I have struggled to maintain.

But even back here, it's getting hard to ignore the spark of the possibility of freedom that turned into a fire ready to consume my mind and body.


The hope that you will accept me for simply being me. That you will put down the raging flames of worry in my heart.


The smoke is far too close to my lunges to keep me hidden any longer.

Each breath comes shorter as time goes by, the heavy numbness of a fainting spell on my doorstep.


The answer.

YOUR answer, the part that will either burn me with the scorching shock of your disbelief or will carry me to peace by the black river of your reassurance.


My story,

the one you hear right now,

that will never be finished for the smoke has choked me as the ink came raining down my eyes, down my throat, in a vain attempt to keep the fire at bay.

I don't want to die.

Death is so dramatic,
It changes plans and ruins days.
It affects more than one life.

No,
I want to disappear.

I want to one day be gone from the face of the planet,

the only hint that I ever was there in the sticker I gave my friend in kindergarten,
still stuck into a long forgotten notebook or a puppet.

The only memory left of me in the bag of someone who forgot to give back the pencil they borrowed.

The only trace of me,
in fading wet footprints on the sidewalk between puddles.


They say that when you die, you either go to heaven or to hell.

Or maybe you'll be incarnated into a delicate butterfly flapping its wings to the sound of a powerful stream.

Each believe in their own heaven,
imagining the perfect world for them.

And isn't that exciting?
That there's a life after death?


How do I explain, then, that my heaven is

the pitch blackness of the unending unconsciousness.

The quiet rest of the ground.

The forever closed eyes and

the stillness of the heart.


Living is the debt I pay for the world.
Why would I want to pay forever?


Someone once told me it sounds like I want to die and I said

No,
I want to disappear.