I’m fourteen years old and I’m wearing a skirt that’s too small for me.
when I kiss my parents goodbye
a family friend looks at me,
then at my parents
in disbelief.
“You’re letting her out like that?”
I almost snap at him but when I meet his gaze I don’t see judgement
but fear.
I’m fifteen and my friend and I
don’t walk down big streets at night.
When men yell at us it makes our skin crawl.
I’m sixteen when a girl in my class
buys a keychain
that doubles as a knife
I tell my mother and she teaches me
how to wield my house keys
like a weapon
I’m seventeen years old and it’s almost two a.m.
I want to walk home
but my friends block the door.
They’re scared if they let me go
it’ll be for the last time.
Now I get it.
I see why my mother can’t sleep when I’m out,
I understand why my male friends slide their arms around me
when it gets dark.
When my grandmother eyes my hemline
like it’s poisonous,
I get it.
My parents do everything they can to keep me safe
but they can’t change the fact that my body
is a war zone,
they can’t help that there’s too much hunger
in this world for safety,
they can’t close their ears
when the man on the news says
one in five women experience sexual assault
before they graduate college.
I’m eighteen years old.
I’m at a party, and as I back away from a drunken boy
he fixes his eyes on me and asks,
“What are you so scared of?”
my teacher sent a student home today because the student had had an anxiety attack earlier in the morning and she said “if you have a broken bone, you don’t just keep walking on it and damaging it more, you treat it. Your mental health is the same. Health then school.”
I was about to get really angry but it took a different turn than I expected
hey friends,
just a lil shoutout to those of you receiving your gcse results tomorrow, i know it’s scary but please remember that a grade does not define your self worth!! i really hope you get the results that you wanted but even if you don’t, let me remind you that it is not the end of the world. you can always request a remark or a resit and i’m very proud of you no matter who you are or how you did because please remember that these exams don’t accurately test your knowledge or intelligence, it’s a lot of luck and you did your best and that’s all that matters. good luck tomorrow, hang in there!
there are 2 sexes but a lot of genders. when a child is born, you have to take care of them as the sex they are because they are uncapable of understanding the difference between all the gender identities. it’s not transphobic or cissexist it’s literally giving the child proper care
