Do It Like A Dude

It starts in my fingertips. Numb. Slowly, quickly engulfing the fingers my tips are attached to. Making it's way through my hands, up my arms, it spreads like a disease through my blood stream, tensing my shoulders squeezing my stomach into a knot; every heart beat feels like work. The pressure in my throat extends to my tear ducts and two miles of walking and concentrating on my breathing are not enough to help me pull it together. The second I step into my house and close the door behind myself I lose myself in the privacy of my own pain. I drown my tears and my screams in the very same pillow that happily lulled me into blissful sleep just hours before. The anxiety that grips me, uncontrollably, taunts me into a form of depression, deceives my body into believing a physical ailment has taken over. The only reprieve is sleep, or whiskey. Food is not an option. That squeezing that grips my stomach only causes the rejection of food. And my soul, my self, feels rejected by the world, by you, and him, and him and him. I feel betrayed by my own growth and maturity as it has brought with it and inability to find any man who will do and each I think will do, does not. There is no such thing as a good man. There are men who hurt me, rape me, hit me, rob me of an innocence and a healthy body image. When over and over again my hopes are dashed to ashes of what may have been had circumstances been different I start to question what is wrong with me. It's hard to not make it about me. I am seemingly the common denominator. Right? Is it my wide hips? My decision to get rid of my car? Do I say something incriminating? Is there something wrong with my face? Am I not quick and witty and cool enough? Why is it that I can't find a man who thinks I'm as amazing as I have worked in my life to be? The bottom line is that I am, in fact, as amazing as I have worked to be in my life. Whatever their issue is, is not about me.

I will be okay.