This is not a safe piece.
This is not a safe piece.
This is not a safe piece.
CW: This contains repeated and specific references to sexual abuse and rape.

Hand over mouth, shhh.
Arms and legs held so mouth could be uncovered and filled.
Hands holding mine became vises when i didn’t want to go.
Being sat on a lap with arms criscrossed in front of me.
Pulling my legs apart for pictures.
Always wearing dresses.
Easy access. Always throwing away the creamy greenish yellow. Panties are evidence.

Held down in the shower so if i bled it would wash away. My dress a flowery, reusable shroud.
Thrown in the tub and restrained by the fear of more, washing pain and blood and piss and shit down the drain. Scrubbing the bruises and scrapes so hard it made them worse. scrubbing the open bits of me so savagely i couldn’t stop myself from resisting them.
The soap burned.

Held down in the car so no one would see me enter the garage in the affluent neighbourhood. Held down while driving in case i tattled.
Held down for… other things.

Held down, face into the bathroom floor, to smell and taste what i hadn’t cleaned properly. Held down, face pushed into the ice cream carton with one spoonful left. Held my face into the hot ground beef that i’d clearly been eating while cooking it. Face bashed into the stovetop until someone pointed out my nose was bleeding and i’d get blood in the food.

Held down in school, by the kids who’d make me pick up what they’d drop, or lick the toe of their shoe, or the dogshit stuck to the bottom. Held down by teachers: stop asking so many questions, we’re here for learning not discussions, held down because i couldn’t speak unless i’d completed my homework. Held down because i’d been made to walk with their textbooks on my head for hours. Held down because i’d held those textbooks perpendicular to my body until i couldn’t anymore – and then get beaten with them.

Held down by teachers who told me i couldn’t do the one thing i was good at, because it made the other girls envious. Held back from school politics because i took it too seriously but didn’t look the part.

Girls would invite me into their closed bedrooms for rare, and therefore strange afterschool get-togethers. They would get on top of me and hump me until they came. Boys who hated or ignored me during school would hold my hands and escort me home, throwing me down in carragana bushes and humping me until they came. I choked on the bugs until i vomited. They’d laugh. Later, i’d be held down over a lap and beaten for my dirty dress.

In later years, telling boys NO meant ridicule and shame. Held down and having my pants pulled off and being laughed at for my fat thighs. Or being held down and beaten. A former family member who always had easy access to me before, held me down on his bed and raped me the first time i told him NO, and then his brother that was watching, beat me and did the same thing.
Another tried to suffocate me.

Do not ever lay your hands on me without my clear consent.
Yes, you can hold my hands.
Yes, you can hug me.
IF YOU ASK FIRST AND I SAY YES.
FROM TODAY UNTIL FOREVER.

You cannot ever, EVER, in any way, physically restrain me.
If i’m going somewhere you don’t want me to go. Tough titties.
If i’m doing something you don’t want me to do: like self-harm, call the ambulance, like destroying property, call the police.
Like hitchin’ a ride with a sketchy truckdriver, call the police.
Like some behaviour you’re fairly certain i’d regret in the morning, call my husband.

DO NOT TOUCH ME WITHOUT MY PERMISSION, AND DON”T EVER TRY TO RESTRAIN ME. You risk a shitstorm of my people and we’re like a fucking hurricane of destruction.
And to my knowledge, no one’s ever held down a hurricane.