Everything is so tight.
Jeans, leggings, dresses, shirts, skirts, jackets
and summer wear is even worse and more revealing with
crop tops, shorts, and even shorter skirts and dresses.
How are we all able to breathe?
Victorian fashion had corsets
and those made them faint!
So why does the fashion have to be tight?
Don't get me wrong,
I do like skinny jeans, and tight shirts and dresses
I am a girl after all,
we all give in to the status quo of fashion at times.
But, sizes are even smaller now than they were before.
I haven't gained or lost weight,
my waist size hasn't changed,
nothing has.
Except for the clothes.
Are we trying to make women smaller and thinner
by just shrinking the clothes?
It should not be ¨Survival of the fittest¨
in the dressing rooms.
That isn't cool.
Also, why are the pants so short?
I have long legs, okay,
and because my waist size matches someone who is smaller than me
then that must mean that I am short
according to clothes.
Therefore I have difficulty finding pants
that fit my waist
and my legs.
I am not blind to my surroundings.
Every single girl
Goes. Through. This.
We all have shopping woes,
some worse than others.
We all gain uncomfortable experiences
whether it be from something not fitting,
or from the attention on the streets
that we get for wearing it.
Then of course, don't forget the media!
Remember all those pictures of perfect people
being shoved down our throats
strangling us until we accept the fact
that we should be just like them.

Suffocation is the latest fashion,
and we are expected to wear it well.

"Would you like some cake"
A women asked me politely as she was exiting the door holding a tray of cake.
"No thank you, i'm not a fan of cake."
I respond, laughing politely because the situation was a little bizarre.
"That's probably why you're so skinny and not fat."
I didn't respond after that and here's why:
repeat her last line, except with the nastiest tone you could imagine.
Then imagine her glaring at me as she left.
...
What did I do? Why did that escalate so quickly?
What just happened....

Hush little baby,
don't say a word
cause mama is crying
and there's no mocking bird

and we know the mockingbird won't return,
so mama's gonna say go back to sleep, her tone stern.

Wait, where is that shiny ring mama likes?
Mama says she told it to take a hike.

She stepped on the shiny, jagged objects at last,
but mama says it's just the broken looking glass.

Didn't papa say he'll buy you a billy goat?
But mama says ¨not another word out of your throat.¨

How about that bull and cart you were promised?
Mama said papa was never honest.

When will we buy a dog named Rover?
Mama looked at you and said it was all over.

You dreamed of the day you'd have a horse and cart,
so you could leave and mama won't see you depart.

Now your life is lived with a grain of salt,
and mama never said it wasn't your fault.

Hush little baby,
don't say a word
mama loves you very much
but papa won't return.

Innocence,
where did you go?
I swear just yesterday
I was a little girl in fifth grade
who told herself that she was going to do something
BIG.
But here I am
typing away endlessly,
questioning why things are this way
because I swear
there were two paths my family could have taken
when I was in fifth grade,
and the most difficult one was chosen for us,
and I don't know if I can handle it.

My sister drinks, smokes, and has *** too much,
she's only 19,
she has told me over and over again
"Don't be like me, because I did this,"
and then she proceeds to explain to me,
in very vivid detail,
what she has done.
But I never wanted to hear it.

My other sister, who is now 21.
I was not very close to from sixth grade
to my sophomore year in high school.
I couldn't have told you what her favorite color was,
and she couldn't have told you mine.
But I idolized her.
So the day I learned that she was like my other sister
for her high school career,
was the day I learned how useless pedestals were,
because people always seem to fall even farther,
and the impact hurts everyone even more
than it could be imagined.

My brother, who is 16,
is the one I absolutely adore.
I always try to be there for him
whether I am at his games
or just hanging out with him.
But the days where he doesn't say anything,
scares me.
Because I can't tell if he is okay,
and all I want to know is if someone is okay.

My parents are the best I could ask for,
but I am always under so much stress from them.
I feel like they are putting all of their hopes and dreams on me,
as if I am the only one who will do something with their life,
and that terrifies me,
and depresses me.
The expectations are not something that I wish to go through,
because they aren't my expectations,
they are somebody else's ideals placed over my own.
I also don't like how much work I do for my family,
and how much work I do in school,
only to get nothing in response,
not even a thank you.
I just get told of how I could have done it better.
I know that those sound minor,
but they still cut deeply,
because it feels like no matter how hard I try,
that I will never do anything right.
They also count on me to watch my niece and two nephews
and it has taken them two years
to mention how much I have done for those troubled kids,
whose situation tore me apart.

In sixth grade I became an aunt,
because my half-brother is an idiot
and he got this girl pregnant.
Because we are a nice family, we offered to take in this girl
and try to give her an opportunity in life to do something.
But she just lied and manipulated us into thinking
that she was going to school,
and that she was being a good parent,
and it worked,
But, one day we found out the truth.
My mom saw her out of school
when she was supposed to be there,
and then discovered that her school notebook
had only one page of notes for a month of school.
Then we all saw her hit her child's hands
and then face,
then spanked her child for crying when she needed a diaper change.
Then one day,
my half-brother and his girlfriend
took my niece away.
I was in seventh grade at the time,
already dealing with my own bullies and demons,
but that day is burned into my memory.
It changed my life forever,
because I honestly believed that I would never see my niece again,
I believed that she would be dead in the next year.
I gave my niece a kiss on her forehead,
and I prayed to God that she would be okay.
I ran into my house and I cried.
That was the day that all of my innocence was taken away.
Everything has been my own Hell since then.

And I really miss those days where I looked at the world
as this beautiful and exciting place
and where every new answer fascinated me
to the point where I loved asking
Why?

But now I hate that question,
because there is never really a straight answer anymore.
*To be continued...