youngblackandvegan:

When people tell stories about how their parents beat them, it’s always interesting to see their face change because they expected me to say “me too lol” but I instead say “I’m really sorry. You didn’t deserve that”
Last time a co worker who also has West Indian parents was telling me in a joking way how he remembers being beaten with a belt because lied about his report card. As he was laughing it off and saying he deserved it, I just said “wow that’s awful hun. You didn’t deserve that.” And his whole face changed. Like it hadn’t occurred to him that it’s messed up that a part of remembering his childhood is remembering how badly it hurt to be beaten so badly at such a young age.
Another time I had a friend, non West Indian parents, who talked about how she made a mess on a dress that her parents got her. It was really expensive apparently and she spilled red juice on it. She talked about how she was ordered to take the dress of and was beaten with a belt too without any clothes on. And she was laughing and said “I was a bad ass kid lol” and I said “no hun you were just a kid”. And she looked at me and immediately stopped laughing and just sat there like “yea…I was just a kid. I don’t know why they did that to me”
My mom was raised in a household where she was beaten so badly….I just don’t understand how she is so loving now growing up in a home where she got so little love. They called it discipline, but once she became a social worker she began to see that it was abuse. That she grew up terrified of her parents, although they thought it was respect that my mom felt. It was fear.
We have to get comfortable challenging what is often seen as cultural norms. We have to be a generation of people who are not ashamed to say “I would never beat my child”.

(via empowerindigo)

pure:

Me when i see a wild animal in a metropolitan area: reclaim your space, we are the invaders, retake what is yours

(via lostbutyoucanfollow)

allotriophagy:

how do you even see me

i am a collection of rotten teeth and an insecure mind, clumping hair falling out at the root a jagged jittery mass of septic wounds

shards of marrow poke through my flesh, i am still pretty to you but i am haunted i am haunted i am haunted and am wasted i am wasted i am wasted you will never begin to choke this sickness out of me 

own me, control me hold me in the palm of your hand my neck and my wrists call for your hands i am your baby girl sweet sunshine honeysuckle wasp bite you ask me to stay longer and i never can but always will

i am so small and so fragile, so magical and becoming 

i twist your stomach, make you perverted from my beauty 

i am unsightly, heinous

i am a crime you’ve committed in your darkest universe i am bleeding and you are ravenously drinking my blood through a straw i am crying and you are leisurely swimming in the callous ocean of my saltwater longing to be something different, something worthy of space and time and flight and voice and wisdom and depth and reach

i long to be possessed i love to be obsessed 

about 

but you will never hold me you will never know me i will never relax into your needs, be nude in your wallflower spaces and vibrant in your trophy world i am not your dream girl starshine lollipop horsefly

you will touch me in the softest places not knowing you are touching scales and razor burn, desperate to be what you want 

i shrink so small i become something else, warped you look at me through a magnify glass and then accidentally burn me with the sun 

i beg you to squish my guts and lick my juice after

i am only here to hurt and harm this body you love to take from: 

your gaze is a violent force and it is the first step i cramp myself into the corners and edges, cut myself on your desire. your voice is violent force and it is the second step. i ask how do you even see me when i am nothing but what you see. your touch is a violent force and it is the third step. i crumble between and in front and behind and i exist only in your mind and you are left longing and i am left hurt and you go on to put your longing into another sexy sassy cotton candy dreamboat and i go on in grotesque chunks, willing to be craved again