here are two things that are true about that: 1. i understood, innately, without ever being told, it was a problem 2. i understood it wasn't-for-kids. whatever was wrong with me, it was inappropriate, somehow.

it was easy to pick up on that it was wrong, but i didn't understand exactly the "why" of it. the topic was handled like frost. nobody laid their hands on it too-long. i couldn't ask questions about it. google wasn't helpful, either. the same way i didn't have to be told every swear was off-limits: i just knew this-wasn't-polite by instinct. nobody ever said it was bad. but nobody said it was good either, and the silence around it was perfect.

except the jokes. i heard plenty about it from the jokes. and the bullying. it's pretty hard to say i am like that though when your image is a rusted, angry thing. i don't want to be one of those things - what they painted for me, back then. an effigy of sexual deviance, of dishonesty, of depravity. and no other gentle ornament to guide me - just the punchline, dangling, as evidence of others of my kind.

i remember being about 7 and making up a story about loving a girl before stopping myself, harshly, in the middle of a sentence. the thought, ringing in my head: you aren't supposed to do that. i was anxious for weeks after, worried jesus could hear - that he'd be disappointed.

i remember changing pronouns in my stories so they wouldn't be "so descriptive" about other girls. i remember not wanting to go into locker rooms, afraid i was a predator. i remember making up infatuations with boys. this book i'm reading about mental health keeps talking about how, at a certain point of trauma, we train ourselves. i literally wouldn't let myself touch another girl, worried i'd come across as creepy. i was 12 when i started self-harming. it was not an addiction i kicked easily.

"it won't be a problem if we don't look at it." "it's not responsible to expose this to children." "why do kids even need to know this?"

currently thinking about the commitment level of Lena “I could be the luthor who shares her home with a kryptonian” Luthor

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