It's so strange, coming out on the other side. Certain things form who you are, and make fundamental changes to how you see yourself and navigate the world. Sometimes, you make it through a time, and you realize going back to your childhood home, your comfort, the friends you once knew and you realize that the spot you carved for yourself no longer fits you. the person I claimed to be no longer bears resemblance to what I see in the mirror. you walk through that door and are changed. sometimes, you can't go home in a way that matters.

my trauma, my fear, and my convictions morph and change me. I become who I once needed. Fierce, protective, emotional, and careful. I've come to terms that sometimes I was a terrible person, mimicking the things that are said and done around me to survive. I need to give the acceptance I was not shown. I need to give the care I craved, to myself and everyone around me. I need to fight. I need to say the hard truths. I need to be selfish and take the things I need to survive. I understand more than ever some of the things that make me who I am, and the internal fight I deal with daily is going to last as long as I do. I need to live for myself because trying to stay alive for everyone else isn't working. 

I'm less than two weeks away from 27. 14-year-old me, 17-year-old me, and 23-year-old me are in there somewhere, proud that I lived through their attempts to kill me because they couldn't accept themselves. they had no one to understand them, but I do. I see them. I see me. I've been given so many second chances.

 I became what they needed.  I became my own safe space, a place to rest and create. I am the person that feeds them when they are hungry and sits with them when they can't see the good in the world. I love the body we all share ferociously, and I give the body the nourishment and rest it needs. I'll fight for the future my best friend tried to drown at age 8, I have the sexual ownership that was almost stolen by the many men that it will never belong to, I fight the establishments who tried to control me and once fooled me into thinking they cared about me. I protect the health that so many jobs and men have tried to mine riches from for themselves.  I am my own. I choose who to share my energy with. I choose who I surround myself with. I choose my path forwards, for that's the only direction to go, no looking back. I respect myself, I make space for personal growth and healing.  I am my own light. I surround myself with love.

I acknowledge the many things that happened to me in the past and I feel the hurt no one else is capable of listening to.

I have a voice. I have free will. all of Man's Gods are nothing to me, for I govern myself.

I am woman   I am creator    I am healer     I am hope    I am a force of nature

No one can take from me that which is mine, be it my sex, my health, my freedom of choice, or my life.

I will celebrate myself. 

I will set myself space to unabashedly feel the whole spectrum of human emotion. 

I know loss, I know grief, I know pain. 

I know bliss, I know love, I know determination.

My body is mine. no one can take it.

My soul is mine, no one can determine its worth.

My mind is mine, only I can make its decisions.

Life has many chapters, and the new chapter is one I'm writing for myself.

I was sabotaged young because the world is afraid of my power. 

The world needs me in it to see its strange beauty and its pain.

 I was put on this world for many reasons, all of which I determine on my own.

I was put here to mourn and to heal. To get stronger. You can't kill me. You can't take my heart. You can't kill me in a way that matters.

I am here despite us both. despite everything. I am beauty and trash. I am dust and starlight. 

I am 

I am

i am

I am here. I made it this far, through war, through plague, through control, through neglect. I have become something wholly unexpected. I have teeth and claws and blood. I am soft and strange and I contain multitudes. 

I exist, despite everything. 

I can give myself peace. 

and, despite everything, I still care. 

I break curses. I bring blessings.