“To Speak Or To Die”

Watching Barbie watch as Ken takes over barbieland, takes her dream house and turn it into his own property, ruins her things whilst she cries in despair and suddenly I’m six years old again pleading my brother to be gentle with my toys as he throws them on the floor and against the walls. The hundreds of dollars in dolls that my parents spent for birthdays and christmas, told me to be careful with and showed me how to play nice destructed and destroyed as my brother grabs at anything and everything, tosses them around, stretches their plastic joints and pulls at their heads while I scream for him to stop seemingly wasted in seconds. He throws one down for another and I’m too small to grab them off of him. Easily toppled over as he pushes me aside and I’m wondering what I ever did to him to deserve it.

Seeing people talk about Ken being a metaphor for little boys who grew up to be porn obsessed, objectifying teenagers who then grew up to be misogynistic, angry men in power who you will always miss as the innocent little boys they once were whilst they don’t notice a single thing about their progression hits so much harder when those little boys weren’t just your playground friends but your older or younger brothers who grew in the same house that you did, experienced so much of what you did, lived by your side for years only to still become those men.

No one could ever hold me the way my bed does. Through countless nights of dreams, terrors and ceiling staring, I have felt no greater comfort than being wrapped within these sheets. The pillows catch every tear, the doona holds me throughout the night and the mattress carries the weight of it all. There is nothing else alike this sanctuary and it is mine in its entirety, never meaning as much to the other bodies it has held as it does to mine.

My body sinks into the mattress the way one would float on water, I have become weightless and weighted in my existence all at once. I am heavy and light in my presence, I feel nothing and everything all at once. I am content.

How could I ever feel hatred towards myself? I am the same child that stood with rocks in my pockets and sand kissed legs. I am the same child that filled the air with the loudest laughter for it could not be contained within my baby lungs. I am the same child that giggled as I spun around in my dress, that gushed about being a princess. I am the same child who insisted on only having what I loved, the same child who had her best interest at heart.

The warmth inside of me reminds me of my human nature, the blood that flows through and kisses my veins as it passes.

Your consumption of my mind is one you do unknowingly yet you seem so willing that I will allow you to continue to feast.