My hands turn into fists as I clench them open and closed.  They are not longer hands, as they pulse like my racing heart and are nearly as nervous.  As I walk to the bathroom, as I have so many times before with a specific detrimental purpose in mind, I am overcome with anxiety and fear because I want to engage in older behaviors.  I want to stick a finger down my throat as if it is a snake that wants to swiftly swoop in and grab my unguarded uvula.  I want to convulse as I used to before the ***** would flood my mouth and body like a storm, shaking me violently from the wind and the rain.  I want to experience that far too familiar paradox of guilty grief and soothing relief after purging because it gives me a false sense of control.  But wanting is selfish.  My desire for pain must be curbed by some miracle, some ambiguity that is out of my control.  Plenty of people know about this monstrous eating disorder that has overtaken my body at various periods of time for nearly a decade.  Sure, I am clean and have been cured of all harmful organisms with which old habits had riddled my body, but they leave their dirt and dead skin behind.  And the remains of their bodies can still strangle anyone who is not careful. They try to pile up all over the thoughts that give me hope and life and allow me to breathe, and sometimes they nearly win.  When I can see nothing but these shells of things that once were alive and well inside of me, I must squeeze them out of my body.  I ball fists once again as my anxiety heightens and want to drain any life they may have left in the cells of their being.  I realize they are not completely dead, just dormant; waiting for the next host to come along and slither their way into these coats.  Again, I squeeze.  Draining the life from these beasts is the only way to avoid relapse and relapse is not in the question, as that would mean abandoning everything I have ever worked for and loved so dearly is gone.  It would mean I was gone.  I continue to press on this invisible stress ball.  As I go to the bathroom to do things any normal, fully functioning human being needs to do, I do this over and over again.  Tears stream down my face because the skins are all I can see.  They blot out the sunlight of hope but I do not give up.  I simply close my eyes because there is darkness there too, but it is the darkness that I can control.  I walk out into the world, slightly defeated, but also overjoyed that I was winning this vindictive war.  When an addiction takes over your life, there is no weapon except for hope that can compensate for the loss in such a battle.  Therefore, hope is a flower, and it thrives in me, every time I choose to make those nonviolent fists.

To my sexist coworkers
Who think this is just another feminist discourse. And that it should not be taken seriously because feminism is a joke. Well, is what he did to me at seven a joke? The way I plotted to shoot, stab, **** him every time we had a family party or dinner, the way I forced myself to snail and just be glad in the midst of planning his ******, is that funny to you? How, almost ten years later, another evil character was able to do things that were almost identical, except I was begging him to stop with every move his grimy finger made across my smooth skin, defiling it each time he touched me and ignored my pleas, do you laugh at that too? And I almost forgot, the care with which the first one was treated and the disapproval that was directed towards me after the second one, do you find that amusing? I was blamed and no one even cares how he shut out everything I said to him, how he harassed me via technology to no end, how I felt trapped and at times even felt that jumping off of a rooftop into a deep ditch where no one would ever find me and I could die peacefully was a more viable option that staying under his gawk. An owl stalks his prey, and he was ready to attack. Knowing that had I made one wrong move or said one thing differently that this would have had an even more tragic ending and I would have bore the blame. So yes, this is just another feminist rampage, but it needs to be heard. No woman or man deserves to go through the anguish of not being heard because of their status or reproductive organs as I did. I am not the first to experience this trauma and sadly, I am not even close to the last. This is my story, her story, his story, their story, and it is our duty as a human race to hear each individual and personal tale they have to tell. We owe it to our loved ones, complete strangers, our parents, our children to listen. This story of oppression and the ability to overcome it needs to be told.

You know if you asked them "did she have an eating disorder?" No, she's fine.  And yet they spend so much time trying to convince me I am crazy.  I'm either utterly, irreversibly insane or I am absolutely fine and dandy, but it can't be both.  I cannot be both.  I'm sorry that I'm not the perfect little angelic robot who you raised me to be, I'm sorry that I step out of line and speak up for myself and others around me who are scared to, I'm sorry I just don't conform to your high brow society or your selfish mentality.  Am I saying that I do not make mistakes?  Not even almost because sometimes, it seems like I am hardly more competent than an infant who has just emerged from its mother's womb, taken its first breath and tasted this frail air for the first time in its life.  I am hopelessly blind and I **** up nearly all the time.  However, you expect me to be flawless, like snow before it hits the dirt and water as it ebbs and flows effortlessly down its already established path.  If one drop moves out of line, it is not considered pretty anymore, but rather, it is an outlier and an outcast.  I was never pretty to begin with, so why should I pretend to be and conform to something I do not understand?  You cannot tell me I am wrong for this because I love who my convictions make me.  Even if my views are wrong, they seldom waver.  I also seldom wake up thinking "Hey, I am going to make terrible decisions today and ***** up my entire life."  There is usually a reason behind my mess ups and a good deal of pain behind my reasons.  But I have overcome every reason to give up, and I have yet to relapse into that dark synapse that is my past.  In which case, I am freer than the chains that seek to bind me to society's crazy and unattainable expectations of which yours are mirror images.  Therefore, I may not be the perfect person, but at least I am perfectly different from you.

It starts with a needle.  The needle could be anything: a bad breakup, the tyranny of your father, physical bruises in unmentionable places that a person you trusted created.  Then, it floods your veins and this very thing soaks my being with a rainbow.  Now, your pasty skin is turning colors, from purple to red to green to blue.  You know that having waves in your body is wrong, but it is not from a single substance alone.  It is more of a feeling, a pulse, a sensation.  It feels like a shard of glass that saws ever so effortlessly between the layers of your flesh because it wishes to get to what is underneath.  This emotion is overcome with desire, but sometimes it still makes you want to stop breathing.  Sometimes it makes you believe that laying yourself to rest in an easy place where no one would find you or even try to is the only way to deal with it.  It comes and goes for no reason when you are depressed, and it is the factor that drives you to the edge, as well as the very element that keeps you from jumping. While, in one sense, you are no longer you, it may be changing you for the better.  After all, this type of person and item can be fixed, altered, morphed into a better human being and thing.  This creates a tighter and stronger bond between people who are in the same place.  It allows stories to be told that would ordinarily be hidden on a dusty shelf among outdated cookbooks and magazines.  Roots of intolerance can be severed when we realize that everyone experiences this, and it may cause us to view everyone as a person rather than a label.  Because we are damaged, we know that we will ascend from this place of despair. In essence, brokenness is a paradox; it makes you feel like dying would be easier, but it is also the only way you know you're still alive.

Dear White Male Legislators,
I had no idea you all have vaginas!
It seems like you can all take them on and off
At exactly the instances in which it benefits you politically.
Perry, *******, Bright
You all seem pretty concerned with making reproductive rights for women
Fairly obsolete.

Dear White Male Legislators,
You see, we, as females, do not have the option
Of running the other way if our partner gets pregnant
Leaving her in the dust of our mistakes
Being able to pay a fee every month
Not because we care about our children
But because it will keep our deadbeat ***** from seeing the inside of a jail cell
No, we as women do not have those choices
Men do.
And our bodies are not made for your
Political platform or religious debate
No, our figures exist because we exist
And we are people, too.

Dear White Male Legislators,
Our bodies are ours
And they do not belong to a male-dominated government
That seeks to attack them and by doing so
Deems **** culture socially acceptable
Without uttering a word about it.

Dear White Male Legislators,
Have you experienced the shame or stigma
That comes along with even just visiting an abortion clinic's website?
Clearly, if you are ***** and your abuser is not kind enough to use a ******
Not having your body shut down as you say and I quote happens during
"Legitimate ****"
Putting yourself and your unborn descendent at risk if you deliver
Having *** and being unable to deal with the unintended consequences
Makes you a *****, a ****, or a *****
While the man who put you in this position
Cannot control his urges to knock up the first woman he finds even moderately attractive.

Dear White Male Legislators,
You must be pretty important
If you can play God and judge all of these helpless women
Call what they are doing a sin
And **** them to Hell both
In death and in life.

Dear White Male Legislators,
I hope you never get any woman pregnant
Who hopes to be even slightly independent
Or make any decisions on her own
Especially if they involve the rights to her body.
With you,
She will be a byproduct of sexism
And so will your offspring.

Dear certain White Male Legislators,
In closing,
If you truly care about the good of our country and its people
Never procreate.

You explained to me that you liked girls with a little more mean on their bones, and that's why you liked me.  At that time, I enjoyed your company, until the poisonous properties of your kiss made me want to spit it back out at you and the way your text messages rolled in like thunder made me want to throw my phone out the window of a moving car.  You told me I was big, and I pretended that it was a compliment, for my own sanity.  I pretended that my body was the rolling sea as that was the only positive metaphor I could come up with that flattered these curves I never asked for.  I never asked for ******* that placed male attention on that isolated region of my body, I never asked for thighs or a stomach or a **** that I can feel ripple like waves and currents every time I walk, I never asked for this "unconventional" type of beauty, as it has been called by men and women alike.  I never asked for a ****** or a ****** that seem to be the government's property rather than my own.  But I can still use the desire to be called beautiful as my reason to be an ocean, a field, anything that has rolls but is still perceived as breathtaking.  Forcing myself to believe that when he said he preferred the fat on my body rather than skin and bones he really meant that I was something straight out of an acrylic painting that some hotshot artist created in order to materialize women.  I can convince myself that I was not his *****, when he continued to pick me to the bone and ignore my pleads for him to stop that he just loved me too much that he felt he had to show it through ****** advances.  After all, is that not what we are teaching our boys?  That women are mere *** objects that are to be used for male pleasure?  I could go into my discourse on **** culture, but I will spare you the disjointedness and myself the agitation that goes along with it.  I can just accept that this was his way of showing me that I am something to be treasured, and in order to be loved, I must be a possession.  For a single moment, I believe that he saw my entire being as magnificent and illuminating and a rolling field or some sea green ocean off the coast of Australia.  And that, to him, I was exotic and voluptuous and...beautiful.  But that would not be true.  I can keep lying to myself, saying that these men who harass me, even with simple off-handed compliments or comments on the way my chest rises or the way my hips flare out, really do think I am part of the water that trickles and ripples and ebbs and flows wonderfully down its path.  But I am not a stream, nor a hill, nor any body of water.  I am a person who is just as competent as every other man and woman on this planet beneath my feet.  My hips are wide and my ******* exist because I have the blessing of being a woman, and that does not give you the right to judge them.  I did not ask for your opinion on my legs or my stomach or my back or my waist.  No body is better than another; they were all created to do similar human processes.  Mine exists because I exist.  I exist because I am here in this very specific place in time.  And I am unbelievably here, my mind, my physical entities, my kind soul and my spirit are ever so present in this and every moment.  I could choose to be here in a bubble that blocks out their harsh criticisms of everything about who I am, from the tips of my toenails to each and every follicle of hair on my scalp, but I refuse.  I choose to live, unapologetically and undefined by these standards I cannot fit into.  Trying to meet society's criteria will always lead to more failure and brokenness, as there will always be somebody alive on this earth who believes that I am nothing more significant than an ocean.

Sexuality is not a ***** word.
It is the essence of our being
It tantalizes our skin
Seeps out of our pores
And sets a flame to our existence.

The way we express it
(Or the way some of us do)
Is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Majority of people are able to display it
In a vivid and imaginative way
So that they can connect with another person.
And I am not simply talking about ***
Although that plays an integral role
But romanticism as well.

Love is a human experience
It spreads from person to person
Radiating from each like their own individualized ball of light
It is theirs, and only theirs
Until they decide to share it with another
So they can spread this tiny orb of sunshine
And illuminate someone else's world with it
As it has brightened the beholder's.

So why do so many people
Think it is fit to rob the ones
Who, in terms of romantic preferences,
Are in the minority
Of this beautiful luminosity
That blots out all of the hate, violence and anger in this world
Even if for only a split second?
Yes, I'm talking to you, Conservatives and bigots alike.

Who are we to tell other human beings
That they do not have the right to love
The way we do?

Dear So-Called Religious Christians
Who believe that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals
You name it
Are abominations:
Stop playing the very God
That you claim to be following.