Being A Woman (Sorta)

My body is never my own. It is the body of every woman who has ever had any rude comment to me to make herself feel better about her man staring at me wanting to get my number. I only wanted to tell her, "Hey, I'm not your enemy here". But would that ever make a difference?

Times where I wish I could see the man suffer for what he has done, but instead I am here with a mere paper and pen and still live in fear of my nightmares. When I am awake, I am faced with new men who want to either force me to become a housewife or tell me in what they deem as the most endearing form of a compliment, "You would make a great wife for a man". As if my only way of worth is through a man. Have we learned nothing?

I was doing my job and correcting a mistake in the directions they had stated and when they realized their mistake, immediately began the most disgusting comments about my womanhood and how pleasing I will be to a man. Every word I heard them say made me want to vomit. Until I completely dissociated from the situation and had to go to my safe place. I did report it, but the woman I reported the situation to believed I had overreacted and needed to stop letting everyone around me get to me so easily. As if being told I would be a great fuck isn't vile and dehumanizing.

My sex is not a playground to just abuse whenever you find it convenient. It is not a free pass to make comments on how curvy my body may or may not be. It is not a petting zoo to get to feel all up on either. But what is one woman going to do against three men who could easily have their way with her? Yeah, there are cameras and yeah, it's in a public place. But when you are in a place where you are someone a majority hates, they would make up any lie just to make sure you continue to get hurt no matter what. What kind of world is this?

My anger sometimes gets the best of me. Sometimes I imagine how good it would feel to have enough strength to hurt the men who have hurt me. Make them suffer the same ways I have suffered, how every woman has suffered. Show them what it is to not have power and to feel completely helpless. To see the looks of fear on their faces when they know they cannot do anything. But that is a very dark fantasy that I do not dare to entertain, despite knowing how much they do deserve it. 

Flashbacks are the worst kind of torture that you put yourself through subconsciously. To relive all that pain over and over again and have no true control over reality, it's cruel. But that is what the men have subjected me to. That's what they have subjected countless women to. I can never truly tell my stories, like so many others, and that is heartbreaking. You are left with the scars in your mind and body and only time will tell how much they will fade. 

Mine haven't.

Being a woman can be beautiful, but in this world we live in, it is dangerous. Every day we risk our lives just by existing. One wrong look or something said in the wrong tone to a man, could be the end of our life. How is that a life?

I look at myself in the mirror and I see the beauty that has been taken from me, but I am slowly trying to reclaim it. I am showing parts of me I want to show and hide what needs to be hidden. It's for my protection; all I have is me. 

If being a woman means all of this, my heart says I don't fit that mold and want out.