Fall in love

Fall in love with more then just relationships
Fall in love with more things then money and all it can buy us
Never waste your love on people that don't deserve it
Fall in love with what's real, what's abundant
Fall in love with the ocean, and the way the sky looks at night
Fall in love with the sun, and the way the rays feel on your skin
Fall in love with bare feet and flowers in your hair
Fall in love with the way people laugh, and the sound of your own
Fall in love with sadness because through it we grow
Fall in love with your scars because you fought and swam through the deepest depts of hell and survived
Fall in love with growing older because it is a privilege denied to many
Fall in love with love because there is an endless number of places in which we can find it
Fall in love with shorts in the summer, even when you have cellulite
Fall in love with sleep and the way children look when they dream
Fall in love with people and the ones who hold you when you cry
Fall in love with how green the grass is and the way it feels tickling your toes.
Fall in love with the trees and what it's like to climb so high you feel infinite

Fall in love with words and the way they look in a poem or tattooed on the masterpiece that is your body

People say we only have one great love in life, but to be truthful we have many
Love is everywhere around us, we drown in it, then evolve into water creatures
So fall in love with everything
Fall in love with it all
But first, and most importantly,  fall in love with yourself

The worst crime

Rape in itself is not the worst crime. No. The aftermath is. The invisible rape that happens over and over again every time you close your eyes.  That shiver that runs down your spine whenever someone places a hand on your shoulder or jumps out and shouts "boo" at you. They way you hold your keys between your knuckles everytime you have to walk alone at night. The way your heart races when you are home alone and hear a noise in the house. No the actually act alone isn't the worst. The worst is feeling unsafe in every aspect of everything you will ever do. The worst is smelling his cologne everywhere you go. Sensing his presence when you know you are alone. The worst is breathing everyday. Just breathing when all you want to do is stop.

The worse is how your body decays in every spot that he touched even years after. I am rotting from the inside out. He injected dirt into my veins like a drug.

The worst is scrubbing until your skin is raw, until the water runs cold, yet still being consumed in filth. The worst is how one act, done by one person, or even a few can so alter everything about you. Like my DNA has been rewritten. The worst thing is how it replays in your mind like a broken record that continues to skip.
Or how small it makes you feel, so powerless.  Such a greatness of nothing.and how that nothing consumes you. Then you wonder how being nothing can be so vast.  How feeling like nothing can become something that lasts forever.

The worst is trying to believe that your body is anything more then a wasteland when you know that that's all it ever is, and was, and ever will be. Daring to think that maybe you are beautiful and  deserving of more and having the mirror tell you that that is a lie.

No rape in itself is not the worst crime. The worst is how that one act wipes away everything that you are like an eraser on a chalk board and now all you are is the things that have happened. Now I am pain. I am hurt. I am the cuts on my skin.

The worst is feeling like you are lying everytime you say that you are more then what he made you.

His hands

I learned to question what love is by the way his hands felt. The ruffness that they always were. The way they accompanied the glare in his eyes and the smile on his face. They way they grabbed,  pushed down, held down, the way they never let go. I questioned his love when he used those hands to sweep my hair back and whisper in my ear, telling me that this, this is how daddies show their love as his hands grazed my body. He was the animal and I was the pasture. I was filled with green luscious grass and beautiful flowers and a sunset that mesmerized anyone who watched it rise. But he clawed away at my pasture, ripping it to shreds. He poured hot acid all over me, now I am nothing but a wasteland where nothing grows. A place where nothing but darkness resides. Patting me on the ass as he walks away as if to say "that was a job well done" "you did good" I did good. I let you destroy me. I let your hands ruin everything that was mine, they reached inside my soul and pulled out what makes me real, what makes me exist. And now I lay in this bed as an empty shell of nothing thinking of him, and him and that one and that one to and the money that they paid and the way they all smelled and hands....hands, hands everywhere crawling all over me like spiders always searching and looking to take more when there is nothing left already.

I was once beautiful and untouched a delicate rose who just wanted to grow and bloom and become what I was ment to. Then he came and cut me down while telling me that he loved me. I laid there dying trying to reconnect my broken stems, then he came again, and they all came in, carrying hatchets in their hands, cutting me to pieces, plucking off my beautiful petals and carving the word LOVE into each one, leaving me there as nothing, leaving me there to wait for the wind to blow me away.

Once I was untouched and then the day came that he told me he loved me and his hands molded a wasteland out of my body like it was clay.

Sharing At Support Group

On Sunday i did the long share in support group. I feel like i had a plan of what i was going to say and somehow got lot along the way. I don't know if everything even ended up making sense. The topic was on validating our memories. I talked about disassociation, and recovering new memories, dealing with memories, and the moments when i realized i had to stop running from them. Then i talked about the baby. Me getting pregnant as a young girl. That taboo topic that i never speak of. The room felt like it kind of stopped for awhile, like someone was sucking the life out of me. I spent the rest of the night afterwards shaking and feeling like my mind was racing. It's so hard to talk about this or even acknowledge this. Some much different then other memories. Because by getting pregnant under those circumstances i felt like i was losing so much more then i already lost. The Devil took so much away from me already and now when i think of pregnancy and motherhood i still see his face because he took that to.

Tired of seeing this, here i'm letting it out.

There's this memory that has been popping into my head for years. I'm a young girl, maybe a teenager. I'm crying, loudly wailing and begging for something but i don't know what I am begging for. The memory is so vivid that i feel like i can hear myself crying here now. Every time i think of it i feel like something important was taken from me or i lost something i wanted. That stomach sinking feeling takes over and i don't understand. I dream and i see myself pregnant and losing a baby or having the baby and when i awake i am searching the bed looking for my baby because the dream just felt so real. Why was I so obsessed with the idea of being pregnant as a young teenager? Why did i put pillows under my shirt then sit and cry and not know the reasons behind it? Did i get pregnant among all that abuse? If that's real, how could i forget something like that? What kind of person forgets something that big? Why was i crying and begging so much for a baby that would not have even been wanted? I would have had a monster growing in my belly. I feel like i can't know what happened. This is to much.

Something I Need To Say

There's something that I need to say, and its been a problem for much too long.
I look at the world around me and I don't like what I see. I am so entirely sick and tired to death of the way that women are treated in this world. But most importantly America. This country that I live in is supposed to be one of freedom and hope right? People come here to escape the horrible lives that they have had to live. They come here to start over and find something better. But is it really any better? Or are we still just fighting the same battles, dealing with the exact same things, but just on somewhat different levels?

I see people fighting for every right you can think of, picketing the streets, and saying "Enough is enough!" for every type of issue. Yet I don't see nearly enough being done to stop the rapes and mistreatment of women and children. Rape is still that topic that no one wants to talk about. If mentioned it can silence an entire room. When really the mention of that sort of brutality should cause an uproar to fill a room. We should be getting angry and saddened for all  who were hurt in this most unforgivable type of way. And that raw emotion should cause more people to stand up and do something about it. How can you forget that these hurt souls are your grandmothers, mothers, sisters, cousins, and friends? By being silent we are condoning the actions of the men who felt that they had the power to try to ruin their lives.

I hear men and women make jokes about sexual assault, I hear songs on the radio that say that women don't necessarily need to give consent because there are "blurred lines" and that as men know what we really want despite what we might say. I hear victim blaming everywhere I go. I myself being told to "Just get over", "You have to just move on" or "Well you should have told someone then". So then your insinuating that this is my fault? That a grown man, a father held no responsibility for raping a child, but I just a four year old little girl somehow was responsible for not only making sure it didn't happen but also that it didn't continue? But when your a small child and you are hurting who do you turn to? Who is supposed to make it better? Who is supposed to protect you and get the bad guy? What if daddy is the bad guy? Then who can you trust? Who will protect you? In that case who is it that you're supposed to run to?

Through everything I have gone through somehow I still maintained this little bit of faith in humanity and despite the horrific actions of some I try to hold on to that, however everyday that I live and breath that hope diminishes a little bit more and this world gets a little bit darker. I want to believe in the good in people and I want to believe that not every man is evil.. However what I see with my eyes and hear with my ears tell a different story. Instead of teaching young men how to be decent human beings and treat women with respect and that they have a responsibility to protect women, boys are taught how to have sex. By high school they know how to put on a condom and they know about STD's but why don't they know about what constitutes consent? If we teach them and show them that women are just meant to fulfill sexual desires and then we teach them how to have sex then how the fuck are they supposed to learn how to be decent men and value everyone and treat women with kindness? All this talk nowadays is wrong. We shouldn't be teaching men not to rape or women not to get raped. We should be teaching all children about the value of another and that no one has the right to physically harm you, force themselves on you, or guilt you into having sex with them. Telling girls that they should wear some fucking anti rape clothing is saying that we actually have the power to control whether or not a man rapes us. If we had that power we wouldn't have been raped in the first place. We would have told them no and walked away. However that was taken away from us. Blaming the victims is basically saying that men are not even human. That they function purely off of animal instinct and have no control over the uses of their own penis'. That a girl could walk by and without any thought whatsoever he would be on top of her and have absolutely no fucking idea how he even got there. So men are you animals? Do you not have the ability to make decisions on your own? Because if you disagree with this logic then victim blaming should piss you off as much as it pisses us off. It should cause you to stand up and fight for the rights of women. To show the world that you are more then just a walking sperm bank.

Somedays I picture that life that every girl does, husband, kids, nice house, a dog.... Then reality sets in and I realize that the reason I haven't found that is that there are so very few good and decent men in this world. I'm starting to be okay with the fact that I may just be alone, I may never find him, and there are other ways to become a mother. Because I would rather be alone forever and be that weird old lady on the block that is always alone and has a bunch of cats, then to be that woman who married for the sake of not being alone and got trapped with someone who can't even respect her. I deserve better and if I can't find a man that can give that to me then I can be alone. A lot of women measure their worth in their men, their kids, their houses and that perfect life that we all dreamt about as children. But we are more then that. And until we realize that ourselves how can we expect anyone else to? I will not wait for a man to tell me my worth or what I deserve, no matter how amazing he is. I will know myself.

..........

No matter how hard I try this thing, what happened to me, will always be here apart of my life. My reason for reacting certain ways, the reason I interact with people the way I do, and the reasons I make the decisions I make. That's the thing that is the hardest I think. Not the abuse or what was actually done but how it follows you around for the rest of your life, affecting everything that your life ever touches. Sometimes I wonder how I can ever have the life that I want without all of this creeping up on me once again and ruining everything. How can I be a good wife or a mother when this looms over me daily? I have grown so much and yet no matter what the amount of growth is I never seem to feel like I'm far enough away from it to actually begin my life. I sometimes feel so defective and unable to make decisions on my own. I can't live out the rest of my life this way. Something has to change. I need a shift in the universe to break me from this. Break me away from my own mind. My mind that sometimes seems like poison is growing in. I've pulled so much of the poison out, worked so hard and yet it continues to grow. How can one persons actions ruin another persons life so much? Maybe I gave him the power to ruin me so much. Maybe I allowed it by letting myself feel to much, remember to much. Maybe he's still in my head because I'm allowing him to be. But then how do I make it go away? Sometimes I actually miss those days where I had worked so hard to block the memories out that it was as if they barely existed. I could pretend to be whoever I wanted during the day and cry alone for reasons I didn't even know at night. It seems if that was easier. To pretend. Because once you stop pretending reality sets in. You realize that this is who you are, those were the people that were your parents, this is your life. And once you realize that, sometimes its too much to bare.

A Bad Day

A bad day doesn't mean i am not healing
It doesn't mean i did anything wrong

it doesn't mean everyday i am not dealing
growing to become someone strong

A bad day means something else entirely, it means I am still here
breathing, fighting, and growing. So lets get somethings clear

I am a goddamn lion, a warrior.

And now I am free, I am important, I am love, i have a place
I am not the scars that exist nor the tears that stream down my face

Daddy thought he won. Trying to beat the will out until i had no words left to say
But I fought through it all and i rose above
 I grew my wings and i flew away
and into the arms of a new family who taught me the true definition of love

A bad day reminds me of just how far i've come
It is not a setback nor does it undo all the work that i have done

A bad day is just that, A bad day
So keep going girl, tomorrow will be better anyway

LOVE

I am surrounded by so many people, all of these friends that love me and i can't help but wonder how did i get here? How did i find this? I had no one and i felt like nothing. I wanted so badly for someone just to touch me. Place a hand on my shoulder, hug me. Any kind of human contact. I was dying with out it. Sinking into a black hole in the earth. And here it is. Here is love. Here are arms embracing me. I found a place to call home and it not a house but in the hearts of people with spirits so beautiful that they don't even seem real. Is this real? Sometimes i think i made it up, made them up. That really there is no love. How can it be real? It doesn't make sense that once i felt so dead and empty, a ghost floating around the earth. Just an empty shell with broken bits of a girl inside. And now to feel so alive and vibrant and here, and solidly placed with my feet on the ground. I sometimes don't even recognize the sound of laughter coming from my own lips or the unfamiliar feeling of smiling to much. Is this me? Is this happening? How can I be that same dead girl that was so invisible and missing so much? Yet none of those missing parts seem to matter much anymore. Maybe it will always surprise me that people are even capable of loving me or that I am even capable of loving them in return. Surprising that i can even open myself up those arms and arms of people. Surprising that i'm even still here, alive everyday to feel this.

School

I sit here at this computer registering for college two months shy of turning 24 and feeling so incredibly old. It seems as if a lifetime of time and experiences have already touched me. I have no idea who I am or what i want or what I like. In some ways i still feel like a child. So inquisitive and open to new things. Ready to get started and learn and grow and become someone. Then there's this other part of me that says "hush now...you can't go back to school. You can't do this. People like us don't go to college. We work and we get tired and we get worn out and we live in the real world." I hate that other part of me because it makes me feel as if i don't deserve this. As if i did something wrong and don't deserve to have a career that i can be proud of. I know I do deserve a future. I deserve a life. So I don't know why i feel as if i don't. I missed so much already. 18 years spent in hell and several after spent in a different type of hell that i was creating for my self in my own head. I just feel so old. So tired and used up. I've already lived a life. One of a million years. How do I begin this new one?