VI. Learning to Live with Sexual Trauma

ART isn't about doing something right or wrong.

it's about taking a piece of yourself

and allowing it to be more open

than

its ever been.

open /or/ out of the closet

means to be open to criticism,

open to praise,

open to the public's interpretation;

but persisting in pride .

Being proud of the artist that you are.

to explore RAPE in a artistic sense means

to take that which someone treated as meaningless, disregarded as invisible

and make it passionate,

expressive, emotional, rich

turn your pain into passions

& stop ripping out pages

that didn't begin the way you wanted

Lines that weren't straight enough,

circles that aren't whole enough.

How could words express that which I'm too afraid to feel,

the rooms too dark to see.

<3 

There's an unhealthy form of love,

lust lost in time;

spilling emptiness,

imposing upon someone who isn't

you

isn't yours to call on and

turn my life into a matter;

So shadowed by your choices,

my decisions you took from me;

the choice to love!

When will I love?

How i will love?

What does love mean to me?

Am I to live my life as a traumatized child?

Because I tell you,

I tried being normal and it didn't work

you could say, "I'm insane, I'm queer, I'm gay"

but I wasn't born this way

I was made this way,

by a man

who took parts of me

that were too vulnerable,

too afraid to ask for help;

that left a poison too perplexing to process.

Even I blamed the victim when the victim was me.

Who were you to take what's not yours?

& How could you be so mean?

As to take what is birthed pure

and manipulate it into something,

so heinous, so un-pure 

that in the 21st century we still can't speak its name,

molestation matters.

Kids needing words whose ability to speak

has been kidnapped.

Those with no rights, those who are little in this country, depend on bigger voices.

No physical property except their

own hearts and heads.

Children need us.

Children need us to be heard.

Child rape is real,

a reality that is re-occurring

and continues to occur

because we don't SAY ANYTHING about it.

We don't want to hear about it.

You most certainly won't want to talk about it.

It's so dirty you'll tell lie after lie;

To keep yourself sane.

Sane is singing the lies you were taught

like you don't know any better!

It's been hard work,

harder than I ever thought I could work,

to KNOW ONLY WHAT I KNOW

AND TO BE ONLY WHO I CAN BE

No one can take away my sense of knowing..

You cannot take away my truth,

And tell me it just takes time.