not all the way through.

i read once, "Adults often forget what it's like being young because they block out the memories."

right after that: "Similar to trauma victims."
--

last summer, when i told that man old enough to be my father that i had a boyfriend, he said "so?" when I told him i was a minor, he said, "and?"

there are no boundaries anymore, no barriers. and don't tell me "boys will be boys."

don't tell me I was asking for it because what I'm really asking for is for it to stop.


i wish i was a person and not numbers on a scale. i wish i was a human being and not the cleavage in my tank top.

i wish we would stop hating themselves. i wish girls were allowed to say no and eat every day and forget to shave their legs.

i wish boys were allowed to cry and be ballerinas and speak up when something hurts.

i wish we thought we deserved more.


and don't tell me none of this is supposed to bother me, because it does.


listen. i'm tired. tired of having to hear honks and whistles and "hey, baby!" and being told, "maybe if you covered up a little more."
tired of having to see rape stories all over the news and being told, "she probably led him on."

this is not a fault in my brain. do not trivialize me because i'm an angry seventeen year old girl.


we are seen for the length of our shorts. we are seen for the size of our bras. nobody can see us because we're walking stereotypes. words invented to hurt us for the choices we make. bitch, whore, dyke, prude.

my body, my hormones, and my biochemistry have been turned against me.

but why doesn't anybody notice us? doesn't anybody care?


parents,
if you know what it's like to be a kid, fucking act like it.
don't tell me it doesn't matter. don't tell it'll all pass. don't tell me to ignore it.
i'll ignore it the moment "yesterday" becomes "thirty years ago."

why can't anybody remember anything?


i'm scared, and i'm alone.

i like to fuck slowly, face-to-face, on my back, with a boy i can call by his first name. meanwhile sixth grade girls are giving blowjobs to boys in my homeroom just so they can feel wanted and forty year old women are buying sex tips that don't work because somewhere along the way, we let sex define us.

somewhere along the way, boys became animals and girls became rental spaces on legs.
when did it become a competition?


don't tell me it's okay, because it isn't.