IV. How things used to be.

I used to like playing the victim,

until the victim inside of me

learned what it means to be vindicated,

a victim who

realized what it means to be a survivor.

I used to like reading,

until I was told what I HAD to read.

I used to love writing,

then I was told how to write,

what not to write,

where to write,

what I should write about.

I used to like feeling,

until I was told what to feel,

where to feel it,

when I should feel it

i used to like my hips, my lips, my teeth, my hair, my fingers, my toes

until I was told what to do with them,

where to put them, who they were for--

never for me.

I used to like the telephone,

until I picked it up to talk,

consumed by my own silence

hearing nothing but my own cries for help.

Oh a life should never be led on should haves

I went to school because I should of,

I was standing on a crumbling mountain of

should nots and shouldn't haves

doing all these things I should not do,

just to see what could happen.

I was reaching for the stars

into the light, too bright for my sight

into the downstairs

where you shut me off.

Turned off all my feelings into a lie,

a curse of knowing

what you do not want to know

and not knowing if it will end.

I realized in 16 years of NOT KNOWING.

that pain never left me

NOTHING TEACHES US WHAT WE DO NOT WANT TO KNOW EXPECT PAIN

sometimes we have to break before we can begin again

KNOWLEDGE COMES WITH SUFFERING

I wanted to be someone

I wanted someone to know me.

the real me to become reality

reality, realty

a neat experiment

There was  a moment when my writing became right

not meaning i was ever wrong.

But it was just not what I wanted to write.

I wanted to write my story,

but I couldn't do that until I made sense of that story.

They say the past is just a story we tell ourselves.

But when it's a story too scary to share we sink into sadness

a wallow-less pit of despair.

When my past came out to play

there was no where to hide.

When I finally fell to pieces,

AND felt all those parts of me that I tried to forget and

never feel.

I had words for actions now,

parts, my body parts,

too painful to participate

too heavy for words,

too unspeakable

for emotions to comprehend.

too ugly to see the light and say

it's gonna be okay.

I blamed myself

because I was socialized by this society

where we blame the victim

before asking if they need help,

we ask them what they did wrong

before asking who did it to them?

V. Who's Laughing?

you don’t know what her story is 

don’t take the time to get to know it

what she doesn’t even know

or care to know.

it depresses her, it’ll exhaust you.

she exhausts her faith

and prays to forget.

prays to escape

forget praying

and come clean

come home. 

come off of it 

come over

come often 

come here

then there

come clean

never clean enough

you won’t go home the same

can’t stand straight 

always uncomfortable 

always the center of the joke.

someone must be laughing 

otherwise it wouldn’t be happening.

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.