I woke up, panic attack in full swing. This wasn't right. He wasn't supposed to win. This wasn't supposed to happen!
Morning call to my best friend, we're sobbing into each other's phones. We fear. We fear because we're not cis or heterosexual. We fear for our brothers, sisters, and siblings lacking a title. I fear for what will become of the country I live in.
I promise I wouldn't stand for my country's flag any more as long as he is our "president". I can't respect someone who is accused of ****** a 13 year old girl. He is no man, he was a joke for the Internet to feed off of, until it became too serious and real. Until the day youths of the LGBTQ+ community woke up terrified for their lives because his Vice President would favor having a dead child rather than a gay child, until the day Muslim women questioned if they should wear their hijab anymore because they feared retaliation for their religion from xenophobes, until the day the the chance of hate crimes seemed like a more likely answer for bigots because someone isn't white, until the day laughs of mockery turned into tears of fright.
This monstrosity may only be with us for four years, but a hell of a lot can happen in four years. I don't trust this person to run our country, I don't feel safe. I feel exposed and abandoned by the rights I was promised. I wish to join hands with everyone else who is in my position, and let this sink in until the day in January comes, where he gets his wish, and is finally in control.

Their going away for a bit. My best friend. Everyone's a killer but a few won't harm. I know I probably need to go the same route. I don't see a higher up anymore and I can't just tell my parents that I have severe delusions and that I want to end it all without having an intense conversation and in the end, everyone is crying. All this **** I've bottled up over the years is going to come back to haunt me, it's already in purgorty, I'm just waiting for it to come for me. I don't care about him anymore, he used people anyway it seemed. But I still want more.
I want to make custom jewelry out of empty, ripped soda cans, so that I can be the only one who gets to hurt my body. I'd be able to catch both my tears and blood in the same glass, both merging with one another. I'd swirl it in my hand and ask,"Is this what you wanted?" If also respond with,"Yes."
15 years of living and it's gotten worse. 15 years of questioning who I am and my purpose in this world. 15 years and I'm trying to figure what was and wasn't passed down mentally from my family's sides. 15 year old, and I keep asking myself if I'm going to live to see another 15. Hell, my aunt keeps saying she's going to die young, why can't I?
The moral of the story, is to know what you're doing. Try to not be impulsive like me, craving all that sweet sweet attention, good or bad, and try to be as stable as possible. But, if your mind has earthquakes like mine, you're probably ******.

I'm going back to school in less than two weeks. "Will I make it?" has what I've been on my mind for the past week.
I am not a female, my gender identity does not match with the word "girl", but my family sure thinks so. I want to come out to them, but I have an extreme fear of stages, and I'd have to put myself on the potium to tell them,"Hey, I'm a boy." I fear I'd have to yell, scream, and chant for them to be able to hear my message and understand what I'm saying. Even then, would they except me?
My mother told me to wean myself off of my antidepressants because of the way they affected her. I didn't feel like arguing so I did it anyway. I wish I could continue to take them but the halfs of those pills left a bitter aftertaste I wish I could forget, because that taste made me feel better. I'm away from my pocket knife and that makes me want to unzip my arms from wrist to elbow, letting my stars and comets finally be free as the voices begin to silence and the shadowy creature wave goodbye.
I tell myself my body is a universe, to seem more beautiful, to see myself in a different light. My universe is haunted by demons though. The Suns that glow inside my eyes are dying from the unwanted shadows and orbs ******* them dry of life, they're about to burst, becoming a super nova. My vision is blurry and dotted, and all I can see are solar systems falling apart, turning into different variations of Hell, they're beginning to orbit nothing but obsessions and wanting to find love in the wounded parts of myself and others.
I know some people believe that you can't love others unless you can learn to love yourself. That isn't true. I've loved, I've loved others before, I haven't been able to find the right textbook that gives me step by step instructions on how to not see myself as a complete waste of air. I wish I could love myself, it seems I can temporarily do that when I'm with someone, but when my self esteem begins to leave, I know that's when it's going to end. I'd rather be left alone than be able to predict the end of my happiness. My 11:11 wishes, my blown away lashes, my lucky pennies, leave me. The wishes came true, they did, but didn't last as long as I wanted them to. I guess I'm my own fortune teller, in some way.
So, I ask myself, "Will I make it?" Because I know things are supposed to get better, and I know these downhills will eventually level out, but if I get low enough, I'm afraid there is not coming back up.

When I attempt to think about my future, I know I can't. I know, I can only do what I can now to piece together my future like a puzzle. I want to get on T, I want to cut my hair shorter than my parents allow, I want more body modifications, I want to have a completely flat chest, but at the moment, I can't imagine what I'd turn into. A butterfly I'm not able to picture yet. I am at the moment, a small catapillar, not being able to pass for the gender I wish. She's. Hers'. That's not what I want directed towards me. I wants he's and they's. Male and neutral term are what I want my friends to use. Not my birth name, Kit. Kit Lucas Zachary is what I'll become when I get older and scrounge the money together to make that change possible. I must change myself and bold myself into what I want to be happy, even if that means I lose people, I can deal. If they don't agree with how I feel, they don't need to be in my life anyway. I can't say that I'm a boy yet, I can't say I'm pansexual yet. The violence that is occurring against my LGBTQ+ people locks my lips together to my parents, and possibly some of my friends, because I don't want them to be my demise. In this hick state of Texas. My chest binder must be put up due to high summer tempatures, it's too hot to have on so I can't feel at home in my own body. I hate my feminine face, and my father uses double standard, making me shave, making me feel naked and incorrect. I feel incomplete, like I haven't had my right growth spirt, my right puberty. "Oh yeah, she-" makes me want to put a bullet in my head, but it I pulled the trigger I know my family wouldn't understand why. "Hey girl!" don't look, don't turn, they aren't talking about you. But, once I'm an adult with a steady income, I hope to become the person I wish to be.

I had another dream about you last night. I slept for 14 hours straight. It was short, but sweet. You said you were fine now, that you could be in a relationship, you grabbed my hand, and held it gently. Why're you like Freddy Krueger? Haunting my dreams the way you do? I act like I've gotten over you but I know, deep down, I'm just lying to myself, I wish, if I think I've gotten over you long enough, it'll come true. But... None the less. Everything reminds me of you, I can't help it. You don't even talk to me any more, and you haven't taken down our anniversary date from you Instagram down yet. Why? I blocked and unfriended your best friend that lives with you now, because I have this invisible grudge in the back of my mind. He's possessive, he wanted you to break up with me so he had nothing in between you and him. I guess, maybe, someday, our paths will cross again, and something new could happen, probably not though. I have a bad habit of keeping my hopes high.

I was 8, or so I think I was, because I don't remember when this locked away secret happened. It was mid day. I wore the required baby blue and white daycare shirt to go on field trips along with beige shorts that went down to my knees. We sat in the back of the van along with other kids. You grabbed at my chest and crotch like a hungry animal. I tried to push your hands away, but you insisted. You told me, if I told anyone you'd choke me out once we got to our destination. So I kept quiet. I didn't tell that part of my story to my parents when I confessed you'd attempted to drown and choke me out. I was easy prey. I didn't fletch when you told me you knew how to **** a woman painlessly because I'd don't want to show fear, I knew you'd pounce. You're the reason I don't trust most men that are extremely tall and lanky, because my eyes try to tell me "IT'S HIM!!! IT'S HIM!!!" I try to do the math to see if you could still be in school or not, I don't want to be in the same building as you. I know your younger sister learns under the same roof as I, but I'm still not sure if you do. And that's why I fear. It's too late to do anything legally now, everything happened so long ago, and my PTSD clouds my memories. I hope you burn. I hope you're hit my a moving train. I hope your death isn't slow, and isn't pleasant. I hope, that you remember me, if we ever meet again, and remember the pain you caused me most importantly, because you should lie in the bed you made, feel guilt, for being the piece of **** that you truely are, Joshua.

I come from the large Texas city Houston. Where prices are decent, and crime is high, that includes death. Spring Break of 2016, I saw on Instagram, people I half *** knew were posting pictures of you, saying you had gone missing. I was baffled. I hardly knew you, but I still did parcally know you from sharing the same first period class. I knew you by your first name, but couldn't tell you I could remember your last. Days passed, your story stumbled onto the news. The same picture being displayed across television screens across the city, attempting to find your kidnapper. Your father had been shot and burned. Reporters said it was possible that you witnessed this. I hope you didn't witness your father's demise, I really do. I was getting my hair done at a salon when my father told me police had found your corpse. They first announced she was shot, then sexually assaulted. My heart dropped, this was the youngest tragedy I had witnessed before, but, again, I barley knew you. I knew when I came back to school after the week long break that the atmosphere would be somber. First period, algebra. That was the only class you and I shared. Our teacher talked about you, with such kind words, choking up, and in tears. The principal and councilors visited, making sure no one was shaken too bad by her passing. I looked from across the room where you used to sit, on the complete opposite side of the room, at your now hallow desk. Funny, how before the break, our teacher spoke of being safe because she knew a teacher friend of hers who lost two students of his, and how devastated he was over it, knowing they'd never come back or step foot in his class room. It's the same for my highschool algebra teacher. One of the last days we had with her before finals, she asked us to write letters to Adriana's mother, that she'd give them to her, she asked in tears once more. I wrote her mother, saying how no one deserves this kind of loss. How her daughter was a good kid. I went off of what her best friend told me in drawing class as a base to Adriana's personality. She seemed bright, and bubbly, and friendly, and joy, and laughter. But alas, I never knew her, and I will never get to know you, because you have been taken, sooner than expected.