I always tell myself I don’t need a man

But that’s not true, I sometimes feel like I do

Particularly after a breakup or something

Because that’s what many interactions with men feel like, in reality,

The pressure is to submit or to forfeit a level of social acceptance

and it always takes me time alone to recover and find myself again

But now I realize that, the path to finding myself was never lost

It’s always there,

In the middle of that storm of love and hate and lust and jealousy and chaos and fear of being alone

I’m always free to do whatever I want, even when I feel too weak or too in love or too scared.

No, especially then.