Kung Fu Panda

You could have been here watching this movie

If you had just chosen to do better

But why would you be here laughing with us

When you could be choking on self-hatred and lust

You collect women

Rate us in your top 8

The lil boy never left MySpace

Wish I had countered the charms

Clearly seen the poster child for shitty art

Felt it in your lackluster touch

Held my hand just to capture my heart

Staging your hair this way and that

But for how long

Til you're no longer smooth and impressive

unadorned, unembellished 

After all what's a peacock 

without a pretty presence

Should have known I was warmer

Should have known we were different

Should have known when we fucked

When I wanted it to stop;

should've known

You could have been here watching this movie

If you had just chosen to be better

But why would you be here laughing with us

You only hurt the ones you love

A Cautionary Tale

 I see red flags

I see them everywhere

Financial Instability

Non-Existent Flexibility

No tranquility

 

Teaching me about myself,

with their own unclaimed mess

Jumping into a relationship                                  is a red flag

I will to you                                                               a red flag

I have become my own                                               red flag

I've found my superpower

I shall learn through my every flaw

Pick apart my inside parts

Come out the other side on top

The whole world shall burn red

Then I’ll see you,

My favorite purplish hue

I'll quit this nicotine,

just like I quit Old Town.

I'll have no regrets

No man will ever have to tell me to smile

I won't be an obstacle to jump

A bag of bones to collect

Me and my new eyes

Seeing freedom in all of the city lights

Windows flash by

Glass that's never known the reflection

of my Narcissistic boy with an innocent child's toy

I drive as a whole in the front seat of my truck

Breathing it all in

My hand clutches my own heart

His parts are scraped hither

Just more gutter litter

Waiting for the next storm

To dearly depart

I'm Still Learning

    You learn a lot about men throughout your daily existence as a womxn. Personally, I take most of my lessons from when (to their dismay) I've had no interest in having their existence enter my bubble and when I have had their penis inside of me whether I wanted it or not. However, the greatest lessons come from those that you once had sex with but no longer entertain. How the treatment changes when the chances of getting sucked off dissipate. You're no longer a good buddy, and arguably never were.

During my relationship with Z, I started to wonder if I was perhaps Asexual. That's how blurred my reality had become. I believed it had to be about me and not about how I was being touched or the fact that I'd had maybe a handful of orgasms during our violent and toxic sex life.

As I sit here pissed off and on the brink of yet another attack of tears and fears, I question the sanity in myself and all of the other womxn who continue to have sex with cisgender heterosexual men. I have never been pleased by a man in any way that outshines my own grit and smooth vibrating toy. The world makes us mad. I can't name one reason I'd need a man in my life. I can only repeat back what I've heard since I was a child. Who will open that jar? Who will reach the top shelf? Who will protect you? What about true love?! Twin Flame & Soul Mate! You'll find your missing puzzle piece, one day. I call bullshit. I am a 10,000-piece puzzle all on my own. There are no missing pieces and there never have been. Some assholes have just tried to shake up any progress I've made. I can open my own jars... or not. I have a chair and I can buy a ladder. There are no soul mates and twin flames.

I was born into an abusive home, raised in a cult, and proceeded to be emotionally, mentally, physically, and sexually abused so many times that I have to remind myself that it's not acceptable and not to be normalized. Men do not protect us. I've seen this in who my peers have chosen to associate with. I've seen it in the men appointed by "God". I've seen it within the eyes of the man pointing a gun at my head. I felt the full weight of this burden, as I held a crying child behind my body while I screamed for help. Too many men walked by that day, a security guard with a taser even ignored my pleas for help. I heard a lot of: "If I had been there, I would have *grumble grumble grumble*". Well, I was there, and I did do something. Proving once again, that men do not protect; men destroy, they claim things then stride around the biggest thing they've tried to grab hold of: Earth. They are so far convinced that they are "The Knight" in armor just waiting for their time to shine. They believe they are nice guys.

I shouldn't have to apologize for harming the ego of a man when I write, "men are trash". That man should maybe just shut the fuck up and figure out what he needs to fix about himself. This isn't our responsibility. Men kill womxn and children. They start wars to prove they've got the biggest balls. We are raped and assaulted, then put in a place where we have to convince everyone that it happened; some of us stay silent because it is far easier to wage a war within our very being than it is to simply talk. Men recover in their careers, as we become smaller.

We become unwilling side-characters in the tales of crazy, spiteful bitches, while they ride in on a tank disguised as a chariot. So I'm digging trenches and covering them with Mother Nature. Their tanks will fall and they will never make it up to my fortress again. I am prepared to get myself off in multiples, buy what I want, watch what I want, wear what I want, and to never again hear someone make fun of my love for music. I will live for myself. No man shall take that from me again and then get away with it. Maybe it's time we do instigate something. May we gather around our cauldrons. Let us unite and set fire to every organization, group, and person that enables and willingly participates in the damage we are hit with every time we leave the house. Oh fuck, the monsters even come into our homes.

I end with this question: "How many men are actually a friend to womxn?" I look around and I can't see a single thing that makes me confident in any cisgender heterosexual man I meet and know. That's on them.

I'm done.

Bad Habits, Naughty Boys

     He was a habit and a key component to my cycle. I seek out the familiar, relate to pain, strive to fix and paint lies a rosy hue. It's what I've always known, and the unknown is scarier. There is no hope. When you are broken you can't see the future including anything healthy or safe. So he got away with touching me as he did and I stayed. The only question I can't seem to answer is how I seemed to have fallen so deeply in love with such a cutthroat Narcissist. I'm sure every boy/man leading up to him, trickle down the breadcrumbs I definitely need to escape from this vast forest.

Women are poked, prodded, and molded the moment they take their first breath. We learn early on that "boys will be boys" and that we should shrink and fit into the boxes placed before us. How often did we hear "Awwwww! If he's picking on you that means he likes you"? Boys were essentially raised with a different outlook on cruelty. Entitlement sets in early on, and we see the repercussions as we walk through this dangerous world. Cat-calling is supposed to be a compliment. I was 11 years old the first time I was cat-called. A drink at the bar is payment towards attention and the desire to make our body theirs; all for $8. In the same breath men shit-talk sex workers. We can't escape the vortex of Toxic Masculinity. It swarms around us; harming our fellow womxn every day.... no, every second.

So we love men. We pretend that they will be different. We settle, make excuses every time we have to mother them, and take on the role of educator who gives them blow jobs. Every time we hear them gag on a toothbrush, resentment builds. Every time we have to walk around, or even more vile, step on a pile of their snot and spit; the resentment is back. Pounding against every fiber of our being. This is their world.

The Patriarchy is so deeply ingrained in all we see. On May 11th, 2022, I became a victim (one day survivor) of yet another violent crime. Since then, me and my friends have been running in circles trying to gain protection. The cops obviously did nothing. The Victim Advocate we were connected to through the lovely Salt Lake City Police Department did nothing. We keep hearing "It's just the system." If this were a drinking game we'd surely be drunk.

So I reached out to The Lauren McCluskey Foundation. If anything, I just needed our story to be heard by someone who cares, and they promise to listen and believe you when you are feeling threatened. I reached out to Get Gephardt from the local news station. I have yet to hear back, which is not surprising. I have found a Victim Advocate through the District Attorney. She actually seems to care, and even went so far as to say "he is scary" which is more validating than anything else we've heard from those working within our government. 

I came back to Utah with the intention of healing from all of the abuse and violence I've formerly endured. I came to grow. I came to learn how to sit with myself and be content with what I was feeling. I was punched in the face by a man while protecting a child not even 10 minutes after we'd finished moving into our new apartment at The Kensington. He told us he'd get out, he'd come back and it would be worse. We discovered violent priors all the way back to 1994; harming women, ignoring a protective order, a gun charge, assault; that's just the tip of the iceberg. He started watching us, right across the street. We begged the police (ACAB) to do anything at all because we were desperate and had no where else to turn. We are pretty sure he was following us one night when we walked around the block; but no one cared. We begged for a protection order/stalker injunction during our journey through the court house, nobody seemed worried or bothered each and every time we had to repeat our trauma.

So we had to leave our apartment. We had to mourn the loss of yet another future stolen from us by a man and "the system". We are not living there but we are still paying rent because The Kensington refuses to release us from our lease even though they knew a violent criminal lived in the building. They knew he was beating his wife and step-kids. They just didn't care. The Kensington doesn't care even today.

So I am not healing from anything right now. I'd be lying if I said there weren't days I've almost relapsed. To be a womxn is to be an unwilling soldier in a world war we didn't start. So to the assholes that claim womxn who want to be equal should also be required to be drafted into their battles: We were born into your ravenous fray of rape, chaos, and death.

YOU instigate shit every day.

WE are expected to step aside and stay quiet.

I scream "NO".

“You will not fucking touch her.”

Let him...

“Let him be kept 

from paper, pen, and ink;

so he may cease to write 

and learn to think.”

April 20, 1999 / May 24, 2022

     On the day of April 20, 1999, I was being watched by a family friend. I remember eating a pack of Scooby Doo fruit snacks. I didn't understand what was going on exactly, but I knew it was bad. Students were running away while cops were standing around. A body lay on a sidewalk and another across a grassy field. Eventually someone climbed through a broken window and there was blood. I was impacted by that day, as just a child. That is the day I learned that going to school was not as safe as I'd once believed.

The family friend who was watching me didn't approve of the TV show Rugrats. She brought it up to my mom on multiple occasions due to the fact that my little brother and I quite enjoyed the show and often watched it together. Yet there I was, watching death and chaos unfold right in front of me. My parents were in Utah at that time. I remember being so scared they were hurt. She had to explain to me that Littleton, Colorado and Springville, Utah were not as close to each other as I was certain they were. 

Rugrats v. Columbine; priorities of Conservatives never make sense.

I haven't even begun to process yet another loss of young lives. A preventable tragedy in a country that can't seem to put life before ego. Violence brought upon the world most often by men, although we are told that isn't the case. The violence is downplayed and excuses are made. Both of which result in the never ending cycle of loss in the form of murder, abuse and rape. We hear and read people bellowing about abortion harming life yet *motions around* here we are.

It's hard to feel hope in a world, and more specifically a country, that is detrimentally hopeless. As a woman or living, breathing child, it has become quite clear: we don't matter.

Johnny and Marilyn

Johnny Depp and Marilyn Manson are friends. complete sentence

There should be no follow up to that. We shouldn't have to explain what that means. We shouldn't have to prove it. Yet here we are, judging Amber Heard; just as we've judged the women from before. (Leave Evan Rachel Wood alone.) I used to think I'd never be "the kind of woman" who ends up in an abusive relationship and that I could never possibly be my mom. Yet, it happened on multiple occasions. In fact, those that abused me most harshly, I loved. I was in love with their darkest parts and made them my own. I wrapped their issues around and felt the warmth of certain destruction; my familiar. I came from an abusive childhood. My father hurt me in every way. At a very young age I lost sight of healthy love. So I ran to those that mirrored what I'd always seen; sometimes I'd try to fix them and on the unlucky days they'd try to take me down with them. Addiction, abuse, a roller-coaster of emotions that started to lead to only one exit: Anger. I began to lash out, right on back. Then I'd carry the weight of believing that I was truly the monster in any scenario. Further and further I fell, until I almost didn't return. Sobriety was supposed to be my savior (laughable) but instead it became just a stepping stone, to the realization that I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't accept this treatment, because it was and is wrong. We cannot keep normalizing "crazy women" and we certainly cannot continue to judge the women who are speaking out. She could be you. She is me. I recognize so much of myself in Amber Heard. I've thrown things. I have verbally abused. I have finally hit back. Back, being the key word here. Between the mental health issues, trauma, and being surrounded by drug use; I became what I saw around me: I was chaos, and I was surrounded by harm.

When we speak out we question ourselves. When we try to leave we get pulled back in. A small part of me still questions that night he told me I had eaten a cereal that I had never had before. Had I actually eaten that cereal before?

The answer is no.

The answer no evades you over time. What's the point in saying no? They won't listen. By losing your ability to say no you are losing your ability to exist as your true self. So you become a shell of a human. Their thoughts must be right because you can't remember, and they definitely will change, you have to make it work. You love them. You need them. It's crazy how much you can remember once you're out. You start to realize that maybe your memory isn't so bad after all. You realize that you can do a lot of things without them. It becomes so blatantly clear that things are actually easier without them.

Then you have to decide what to do when you leave. Do you stay silent and move on? All the while knowing that there is a new target. Or do you speak? In the case of Amber Heard, she was never going to be allowed to release herself from his grip. So she had to face the world; lay out her trauma on a silver platter. Then the world picked up that platter and clonked her on the head with it.

Sure, maybe she's crazy. I've been called crazy many times. I too have carried the title of "slut", "skank", "prude", "bitch", "gold-digger". Even with all of those labels there are some things you can't change: I was abused.

2 Rooms

    You know when you can sit alone in a room and know that it is exactly where you're supposed to be? Yeah, that feeling, it is beautiful. I treasure these nights, because I know how easily they can flip. I've had so much directed at and around me since leaving Sacramento. It was supposed to be a time of healing, and sadly, now my best friend is along for this astronomically fucked-up ride. It sucks. How can I be capable of helping her when I can barely help myself right now? I want to maniacally scream "Let us grab my bat and go Brooke Hulk on these pieces of shit!" No. That can't be it. So I will sit here, and I will write; knowing my best friend is close by. Knowing that we are both so much more than "crazy", "moody", and unworthy of love and respect. We have been wronged for the last time.

The other night Cassandra told me that I have my shit together and my impulse was to laugh, then I realized that the reaction had been programmed into me. It became a joke, because so many people thought I couldn't do it, or even worse: they didn't want me to. It's not a joke; never has been. I'm gathering all of my shit and getting it together.

Nobody puts baby in the corner.

xo
-D

BACK AGAIN

She was going up

As he was going down

So he came to her

He came on her

Made her his

Always beneath,

But never above

She started going down

Pleasured him just the same

His love wrapped ‘round her throat;

Reality seen through a rosy stain

Passion driven to worship

All of the flags now a bloody resentment

Passages littered with bruises

Esteem desiccated; cracked

She needed the pills to conquer those hills

Then stumbled upon a Sunset

A profound new day welcomed her

Belief beget clarity

Knives out, he's always been the man

Cut, clip, nick, gash

His rage will never grip her again

What once was devotion, now a lesson

Know your significance;

Believe in that worth

Always bet on you first

Better By Myself

…and I could finally breathe again…