^v^

doing the dishes, going to school in the morning, walking up and down the stairs- it all hurts like there’s a hundred little hands squeezing inside of me; so, why would i be so worried about appendicitis? breaking a bone? any other temporary pain from far more usual sources?

getting SA’d as a kid hardly even registered. not compared to the day-to-day anxiety and deep isolation that school brought. i was lucky in that the sexual violations i experienced had a set beginning and end that took up a small portion of my life. to this day, i have a far more viscerally negative response to updating my father about school than i’ve ever felt about my assaults- not to mention every missed moment of my life that going to systemically abusive schools took from me; what’s a few hours to two thousand days.

both were atrocious beyond measure, it goes without saying.

but why should i be afraid to fight my whole life in a steadily more time consuming world, when i’ve already lived through all that?

i’d like to think it was the love i experienced that made me tough enough to make it through it, with the exposure to pain just being a convenient benchmark.