For years the anxiety has built up,
every time I spoke the words were on the edge of my tongue,
I could almost say them,
but the pressure hadn't built up enough.
There was too much going on,
relatives dying,
the world changing for the worse,
having the front seat to imploding relationships,
It was never the right time.
Until one day, it poured out as if a dam had broken.
The confessions and yearning for love rushed out like a tsunami,
to Hell with the consequences and imploded relationships.
Yet, it didn't end like that.
No, the relationships stayed intact, just abrasive.
Seemingly harmless, until the words rub like saltwater raw in the ceaseless wounds.

Why does it have to be this way?
Why do I have to spend years of my life in fear?

There is so much hate for something so natural.
Is it the misogyny?
That I, a woman, dare defy males the pleasure of having me?
Is it religious hate?
That I, a lesbian, dare defy God's image of mankind?
Is it the fetishization?
That who I love is more akin to a **** category than a real relationship?

It could be, or it could be other causes.
The fact is, it shouldn't matter.
We've all heard it, I'm born this way.
After a while, the same argument doesn't mean anything though.
I don't know how else to convey to these idiots I didn't choose this.
I didn't choose to lose my childhood best friends,
Or to be outed to my high school because I trusted the wrong person.
To live in fear that my parents would not accept me for who I am.
To have such a fear of myself, I sabotage any relationship I begin.

I know I should have pride,
and I do.
I just don't know if the good outweighs the bad yet.
All of the good are hypotheticals.
Thinking about my future wife, and house, and relationship dynamics.
I fantasize about a shapeless form that will one day be someone I love.
But for now, that is all it is, a fantasy.

I want it to be a reality,
I want my parents supporting and loving me to be a reality too.
I want to find the person I am brave enough to hold hands with,
in spite of the rage that it causes.
I just want to be happy.

The walls surround me.
I am trapped.
It's almost as if the ability to breathe has been stolen from me.
I can't see anything but the pale flesh encasing my hands.

I see the door,
I see the way out.
But for the life of me, I can't take it.
The fear is too strong, too encompassing.

I want to cry,
I want to scream;
WHY CAN'T I BE STRONG?

Why oh why for the life of me,
Can't I break free?

I try to fight the panic down,
I really do.
But every time the words are on the edge of my tongue,
They never come out.
Everything remaining unspoken threatening to choke me.
I start to tumble down.

I can't find my footing,
people now know.
My perfectly perfected facade is crumbling down.
The ground is unsteady,
I am sobbing now.
Everyone knows so I have to bury it all underground.  

But this is what I wanted,
To have people know.
To finally not be alone in the dark.
To have the words that have laid unspoken,
Finally, come rushing out.

I'm still not ready,
I don't know what I am.
I don't know who I should be.
I didn't choose this time.
I didn't choose this life.
And yet, cruel fate has chosen it for me.

So many people are so free.
Their walls are gone, and they can breathe.
I want to feel that, I do, but I don't think I can.
At least not right now.

I will choose when I break free,
I will choose when I get to breathe.
For now, I will return to my own hell.
Where I hope I break free before the choking fear threatens to break me.

I am a person.
Just like all of you.
I have aspirations, a future, a family, hobbies.
Most importantly I have a life.
The only thing that sets me apart from you is that I am a female.

I can carry a child.
That somehow makes me lesser than.
That somehow gives you the impression I can't make educated decisions.
That I don't have a right to ****** autonomy,
Even though I am a human being.
Just like you.

Taking away the choice to carry out an unwanted pregnancy
Takes away our freedom.
If history has taught us anything,
Those who have their rights stripped are the ones who fight the hardest.

This is an attack on our rights as human beings.
We deserve to have a choice in what happens in our own bodies.
We alone decide that.
Not you.

You do not get to have that choice.
We are humans, just like you.
Don't let the fact that we can bring a life into this world demean us because if you do,
We won't stop fighting until we get the rights to our bodies back.

It's a normal day,
I go to school with my sister.
It's quiet because it's morning and we're too tired to talk.
We enter the school with the normal slow, shuffling feet of our peers.
We get to our lockers and part ways for the day.

It's a normal day,
until it isn't.
Until my school becomes a building riddled with victims.
Because someone felt like they had no life left to live,
So they chose to take the lives of their peers.
Incite fear into every soul in the halls.
Take lives that will be forever lost.
And ruin those that survive.

What teenager can escape the deaths of their peers unscathed?
What teenager can bear the guilt that surviving costs?

I fear every day will be my last.
I fear that I may come to school one day and not come out.
Or worse, I fear that I will come out,
but my sister won't.
I fear for my friends,
my peers,
my teachers.
I fear that the lives of the people I care about and my own
could be changed or taken away so violently fast.
I shouldn't have to fear this, but I do.

I can't count the number of times,
I have entered a room and immediately planned an escape.
Or how I have memorized my sister's schedule to know where she is.
So if this were to happen,
I could desperately try and convince myself that she is out of harm's way.  
I can't count the number of times I have heard a loud noise and not known what it was.
And the immediate panic I have felt overwhelm my body.

Many say that the children are the future.
But how can that be so when they're dying by the hand of a gunman?
How can they be the future, when they might not even have a future themselves?
And how can people think that having a gun is more important than the life of someone who hasn't even begun to live?

It's not more important,

I just hope people will realize that before it's too late.

I have been lost,
lost for years.
Observing the great expanse I once called home.
I perceive the old parts of my life that once brought me happiness.
It is as if I am seeing them from afar,
as if I am in a box that has been locked away,
with only a keyhole to peer through.
My life passes me by as if it had never even happened.
Slowly, I am piecing myself together.
Taking myself out of the box I have been confined to.
I am beginning to see what I once saw,
the color, happiness, and emotions that swirled in the air.
That brought meaning to my life,
but all it takes is someone,
just a single person to put me back where I feel as if I belong.
I will never get a chance to return to the world,
Back in that awful box.
As I will always,
be aimlessly observing my life from the box.