All I’ve ever wanted was for someone to explain to me why and what

What in the world was happening to me, why I had these feelings. Why my dad stopped being a dad and became a burden, like a mental patient, with his childhood abuse and depression

Why the adults abandoned supporting me when I was molested at thirteen in a pubic bathroom in korea

Why I never wanted to hug my friends again and how to feel okay because I missed hugs

I thought I was a smart girl. I thought being smart meant I deserved to know how things worked

There’s a lot of creepy things out there in the world

I Can name the things

Name the monsters in the dark to make them go away

When your brother died after ten years of depression I call that perfectionism

And the antidote is courage

If you don’t have courage then,

We’ll courage is a funny thing

It’s the thing you win by not having it.

If you acted when you ‘had’ courage then it wouldn’t really be courage

Not really

You can also have strength

But strength is funny too

You get strong by feeling weak and you sort of stay with it until the right moment when it can transform into strength

I suppose it comes down to timing

You sort of tolerate losing as much as possible until your enemies forget about you but in the meantime you’re building up all these other skills that they didn’t have the chance to experience

You let the weakness teach you if you listen quietly enough

Like when a boy breaks your heart don’t hurt too quick

Just kind of let it marinate and try to breathe and listen to how the pain speaks

Maybe you feel like comparing yourself to another girl

But maybe he’s comparing another girl to you

Yeah things like that.

You have to be a little crazy to believe it

But that’s when the courage comes in.

It takes practice and dedication

This is just theory

If courage was the olympics sure I’d love to play

I’m sure there’s more hardcore survivalists out there but I might qualify somewhere at some level

I’d like to think that

So I guess the answer to the question I’ve been asking when things don’t make sense is to always be brave and strong

Even when you don’t see any woman like you acting this way

Even when they get angry and try to stop you by telling you you’re bad

Sometimes it’s okay to turn your morals off, I mean sometimes it’s just the wrong context

I think writing is the only true way I can experience myself and my mind and emotions

I’m like a prisoner in Shawshank redemption scraping a little more space every day

One more poem one more surprise one more insight

Creating a space in this prison system of the patriarchy or capitalism or what have you

Where I find that I exist, I am real, my heart and soul is not a myth but it’s tangible it’s me and I am a new law unto the world.