I am afraid that I will do more harm than good
I am afraid that I will not remember my beginning, at my end
I am afraid of dying in the shadow of what I did not yet achieve
I am afraid of wasting my days waiting for my nights
I am afraid of how inarticulate I am
I am afraid that I don’t tell you I love you enough
I am more afraid of dying before my work is done
than I am of the amount of work that is ahead of me

I am standing in a line to buy the groceries with which
I will make you dinner, in a line of women
holding produce and meat and beer and eggs, waiting.
I am standing in a line, I am waiting for
a bus, I am on hold with the bank, I am waiting
to complete the next task that keeps our
household afloat. I am waiting for the loan officer
to call me back, I am waiting for the neighbor to return
my rake, I am waiting for the landlord to
process the check, I am waiting for the cable guy.
I am politely letting someone with a shorter errand
skip me in the line, I am exchanging knowing
glances with other women whose children grow
restless on anonymous linoleum floors. I am
making small talk with the woman behind me
about the weather, I am asking how the
cashier’s day is going, I am holding the purse
of your grandma so she can use both hands
to get up out of the waiting room chair. I
am a woman standing in a line, waiting.

I am only flesh and time, the skin of me
stretched taut across the framework of millennia:
I am yellowed, I am porous, I am
temperamental from the weathering of these years.
The trumpet of the men who call us forward
rises above our voices, and maybe that is the point.
Under their melody we sound unified, our
heartbeats obscured, our footsteps lost
to the song. These are what I carry in me:
the soft, dull thud of the crowd upon the earth,
the miles our flattened feet have walked,
and the constant, heaving, deepness of the hearts
that fall in line, the crowd, our blood.
So use the heel of your hand, the heels of your feet
to find the beat that carries through air and earth. I am
the gatherer, the harpist, the crook and the staff:
we go together, a body of souls, that builds
and breaks and builds, whether the leaders lead or die.

Six years ago today, a man committed the first act in a long string of violent acts against me, and it was a relatively harmless act of vandalism. Six years ago today, I was baffled and posted an irritable status on Facebook about it. I was almost willing to shrug it off, because it seemed like such a minor thing to call the cops about, and I didn’t want to be the girl making a big fuss about a small thing in a neighborhood that has much bigger problems.

It’s a weird anniversary to mark. Facebook showed me the six year old memory of the photo I posted and my chest got tight, my heart beat increased. I sit with these events every day. In the past few months, more women than ever before have begun speaking about the events that weigh on them. And last night, a room full of immensely talented, smart, capable, creative, powerful women decided to put a deadline on the fury we all feel: time’s up.

We live in a culture that teaches women to be small, be pretty, be seen but not heard. We raise daughters in a culture that says women don’t deserve the space required for truthtelling, even inside ourselves. We discount intuition. Silence is more culturally acceptable than authenticity. To say what you need, for a woman, is attention seeking; to have no needs, and prettily acquiesce to whatever is thrown at you, is to be praised. Rape jokes are more acceptable than asking for consent. Rapists are more socially accepted than rape survivors.

I want women to know that whatever is in their head or heart or gut is already the right answer, even before they ask someone to validate it. I want women to learn to recognize all the ways we are minimized and degraded and belittled, culturally, socially, interpersonally, because this is what destroys our internal compasses and self-confidence. We are less able to protect ourselves, to predict outcomes for ourselves, because we are taught over and over to question our own thoughts and feelings and motivations.

We must reaccustom ourselves to our own power in order to claim leadership over our own lives. We must prioritize our own voices over the cultural and social messages that scream at us every day. To find our agency and our abilities, we must center ourselves in our own truths. This work is not achieved through a single program, a single dialog, or a single hashtag, but I am endlessly grateful for #metoo and #timesup. These are hard times to remain publicly engaged as a trauma survivor, but I am thankful every day for the women who are visible, powerful, enraged, and leading us all forward.

we had broken up for the millionth time and i had moved into the basement apartment next door to the meth cooker where the maintenance man stalked me, and my cat was weeks away from dying. and i texted you something snide, something intended to force a reaction, and you showed up at my door looking like peace and familiarity and family, and i said step back. stay away from me. so you stood five feet away from me on the concrete pad between my front door and the meth cooker's front door and the rotten egg smell wasn't quite as bad that night and you told me, something generic, something well intentioned, something peaceful. and i said step back.

i am absolutely sure that i pushed you away from me. i am absolutely sure that i was demeaning, condescending, demanding, unable to see your point of view, unable to recognize your needs and your discomforts, unable to provide whatever it is that you had needed. these are all true statements.

and i am sure too that i could not have been whatever ideal thing you had wanted. i am sure that i could not have fulfilled whatever expectations you had, and never said, about what kind of partnership you wanted to be in. i am sure that i could not have cured your anger or your depression or your substance abuse. i am sure that i could not have helped; i do not think you wanted help.

and i sit now in a space of what feels like complete abandonment, what feels like a space i have purposefully chosen to empty out of anyone who loves me or ought to love me. i sit now in a space that lacks any kind of long term relationships: i am without family, i am without familiarity. i have told my parents to step back, i have told my sister to step back, i have told my oldest friends to step back, i have told mentors to step back. i told you to step back. with a vehemence that i should never have intended. i built a whole world out of how to be alone, and you weren't the first casualty i inflicted upon myself and you weren't the last. i have built a whole world out of being the new, the alone, the outsider, and i have to live in that now.

what would you choose, if you could choose anything?
i would choose the person who treats me poorly: because i know how to deal with that.
i would choose the job that dulls my soul, because i know how to deal with that.
i would choose the housing that is cheap and pestridden, because i know how to deal with that.
i would choose the comfortably painful over the painfully uncomfortable.
i would choose burying all of this, over unpacking it.

sugar, you and i, silhouetted against the pink sky,
sequenced in the grain fields, where we laid down
and watched the stars fade and the rain come in:
where we laid down in the tall blonde waves
and made graves out of the clean brown dirt.

Let this year be the year
we all finally look at each other and say
Yes
This Experience Remains Deeply Unpleasant.
And we acknowledge this
not out of pessimism or insincerity but because
naming it lets us set it aside.
Set this aside:
your anger, your fear, your sadness,
the despair that claws its way up your rib cage,
your self doubt, your creative blocks,
the selectivity in your memory
that steals away the tiny precious things
that matter, your sadness,
your fear, your anger, your fear.
Pick up:
cheap flowers at the grocery store,
a postcard from the bodega, your camera,
your dad’s old sweater, whiskey,
vintage photographs of people you don’t know,
costume jewelry, cappuccinos,
petting friendly dogs, park benches,
your friends, your lovers,
your friends. Your lovers.
The anger and fear and sadness is neither
the heart of you, nor the framework
you build your life inside of:
so put it down.
We do this together.