Just

I’m sick of people telling me to get over it.

I’m sick of people putting a time limit on grief.

Who gave you the right?

Who says you get to tell me what my pain is worth and how long I get to feel it?

Who are you?

My entire life has been tragedy, strife, and misfortune, and only you get to tell me whether it was real.

Your nameless present is the judge to an ocean's worth of tears I’ve cried.

Only for you to say, “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Your mother made you into her coemption, your father made you into a punching bag. Your siblings made you into a mythical monster no one could love, and everyone else just stood by and laughed.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

You mock and scoff. While grown men licked their lips at the sight of my underage body.

It wasn’t that bad?

Was it bad when my cousin took me by the leg and forced himself on me?

Was it bad when I was sexually assaulted Infront of a teacher, and she had the audacity to say, “You probably liked it.”

How bad does it have to be before my depression is accepted?

“It’s just a mood disorder; you just need therapy.”

Just. I hate that word. Just.

It never fails to minimize everything I’ve ever felt. Everything I’ve ever done.

“It was just once or twice. why, are you scared?”

“Kids just do that sometimes.”

It’s never a problem when it happens to me, but there’s always a ‘just’ to explain it away.

I only have myself to blame.

“You’re playing victim. You need to let go of this victim mentality.”

Yes. I’ve been backhanded so hard that it doesn’t hurt anymore; I must be lying about the pain. Besides, I should be used to being life’s punchline by now, so why bother crying?

It feels unfair, but I forget, I’m not allowed to decide what is fair, what is real, what is bad, or good.

I am a sack of flesh and bone with no say in how the horrible things done to me affect me. That privilege is not allowed. Not to me.

“You just have to heal and move past it.”

That would be great if I didn’t have my abusers still gaslighting me in my face. They treat it like a game, taking my things and pretending as though I never had them to begin with. Trying to prove to everyone that my memory can’t be trusted.

The bogeyman isn’t real, and neither is my trauma. I just recoil at the touch of someone touching me sexually because ‘I'm shy’. I don’t trust my own surroundings because ‘I’ve only lived life in my head.’

Who put me there, though?

Who made the real world so insufferable that I retreated inward just to escape it?

Had to have been my fault, mind you, I wasn’t even in kindergarten when I started doing this, but a baby you refused to pick up, comfort, and care for is to blame for your marriage falling apart.

It had to be my fault, so everyone who used me as a scapegoat, punching bag, and sex doll had their reason to JUST do whatever to me, and I JUST had to take it.

There are voices in my head.

There are doubts in my mind.

There are shadows in my room.

There are waves of extreme grief.

There’s a longing for a way out.

There’s hope for love.

There’s a better life waiting somewhere, I just can’t afford to find it.

If I'm not allowed that, then just what the fuck do you expect from me?