Heartbeatbomb

lovebelikeawhirlwind:

tw: rape, violence, mental health issues, trauma

I live in a city where everyone is intimately involved
in the affairs of everyone else. In a city of 250,000 
you are bound to see all the people you want most to forget
at the worst times, at times when you are already feeling weak,
at times when your stomach already burns, when your limbs feel leaden.

I saw you, crossing the street downtown
with a group of women, young women, younger than you and me
from a steel frame vantage point of the passenger seat
of my best friend’s vehicle and my hands clutched the dashboard
so hard my knuckles turned white or the plastic and metal underneath
my fingers gave in with the weight. I don’t remember which one it was,
but I was trying to hang on to something solid when the
world dropped out from underneath me.

I wanted to leap from the car and chase after you,
bring my fist down on the back of your head
and scream at you to reach into your pocket and give me back
my lost innocence, my lost self.
Give me back the notion that I am safe among men my friends know well
and that rapists are shadows in the night, not acquaintances
introduced to me by women I trust. Give me back my happiness!
Give me back my ability to be around men
and not wonder when (not if) they’re going to violate my boundaries or
take yes when I said no and leave me in their bedrooms
while they go to wash their hands of me.

I don’t want to live with fear! I’ve been living with the weight of fear
for four and a half years. Well meaning friends tell me to see a therapist
but no therapist can calm away the contempt that you have for me
based on the contempt you have for my physical characteristics,
my sometimes gender, my self. No therapist can calm away the nausea I feel
at seeing faceless female bodies used to advertise casinos,
lean available hungry female bodies just waiting for you.
No therapist can tell me not to cringe as a man, seeing me walking downtown,
makes an indecent proposition including money and sex
while my so called male friends make excuses for his actions based on the clothes I’m wearing or not wearing. No therapist can make me feel better
about the fact that I was condemned for not coming forward
and naming my rapist, when the tightness of shame choked me silent,
and I was condemned anyway for thinking I was safe
in the house of my acquaintance-become-rapist
while my friend slept unknowing in the other room. You set yourself up for this! No therapist, no amount
of counseling, can ease my grief at the thought that my beautiful daughter
will one day navigate the same waters I drag myself through,
feeling her eyes well up with tears, Why won’t they just leave me alone?

In the car with my best friend, a man I still can’t quite trust, watching you
walk across the street. He says, concerned, Are you okay?

Do you know those people?
And I in my grief and shame and sadness say, No.

(via androphilia)