For Them. For Us.

People with uteruses aren’t safe here anymore.

The trans creators, the gay wave makers, the genderqueer non-binary rule breakers - are not safe here anymore.

Although, we never really were very safe, we were just shushed until we spoke in whispers and laughed when they made jokes at our expense so we didn’t seem too sensitive/ too serious/too quiet, and definitely not too cold/ too cheerful/ too loud.

We’ve been busy trying to be seen, be loved, be heard. We’ve been busy cramming keys into our knuckles and mourning our friends who didn’t. We’ve been busy in toxic relationships with partners that mirror our worst parents because who we want to be isn’t quite right, and who we want to be with is definitely wrong.

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to build safe communities around ourselves, and then we end up getting blamed for setting ourselves apart from the rest. There’s no power in standing alone, and no respect in gathering help.

We’re getting beat by strangers with bad tempers.

We’re getting kicked out of our families.

It’s never really been safe here.

When history classes painted us the prettiest pictures, we didn’t think we’d ever see these days. We never expected we’d be fighting and kicking and screaming. We didn’t know we’d be the ones begging now, for rights to our bodies, for rights to our bathrooms, for rights to our marriages.

We are praying to your gods, even when you tell us they don’t want us.

We are downplaying our skills to seem less cocky.

We are downplaying our worth to be more like-able.

We are downplaying our pain to our doctors so they believe us when we tell them we are hurting.

We stand in hot showers and fill out bathrooms with steam while thinking about everything we should have said - when they called us a name we didn’t like, or when they laid their hands on our shoulders while we sat at our desks and squeezed, or when they used us and we knew it was happening but somehow couldn’t make it stop.

We’re serving tables in restaurants where the customers ask us about our bodies, our skin, our hair.

We’re displayed behind store registers scanning their food while they grin and watch with a hungry fascination, curious desire, and a bit of disgust.

We’re changing our pronouns to comfort the same people that think we are perverted, immoral, and mentally ill.

We disappear by the hundreds and no one stops to look for us.

We were never safe here.

Growing up we were fed this narrative that we could be anything we wanted to be, but that’s simply not the truth. We can be anything we want to be so long as it doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable. What we want to become doesn’t matter if it doesn’t 1.) make money we never see, 2.) make babies we don’t want, or 3.) make sense in a singular religious context.

I have been uninvited to heaven.

I have been sexualized by the world around me since I was far too young to know what that meant.

I have walked so many paths that promised me love and acceptance and the world watched as I crumbled under the weight of not living authentically, and the weight of conditions that quantify that unconditional love.

I have shaved my head and worn baggy clothes and willed myself invisible.

I have never really felt safe here. I know you haven’t always felt safe here.

I am still learning how to make myself feel safer, and I hope in a way, that my acknowledgment of this lack of safety, if nothing else, at least makes you feel less alone.