in response to "An Entrance to the Woods" by Wendell Berry

makes me think about speed vs mindfulness. are we less present, like fundamentally our mind and body being in the same place, because of the speed at which we move now? and not just literally as in physically. he talks about transition and it made me think of transitions in life. "...for they had seen and experienced fully everything between here and their starting place, and so the transition was gradual and articulate in their consciousness" he was talking about location and physically walking but i also feel like it applies to time if that makes sense. things like moving and graduating for me, but whatever major transitions are to each person. i don't think we're always "fully experiencing" everything between here and there, so the transitions aren't gradual. so it's like. yeah, i'm here. but part of me is still there. or yeah, i'll graduate and leave, but part of me will still be here. "the faster one goes, the more strain there is on the senses, the more they fail to take in, the more confusion they must tolerate or gloss over—and the longer it takes to bring the mind to a stop in the presence of anything." i think we all just move too fast. things move too fast. everything is moving too fast. the mind cannot come to a stop. sometimes i feel like there's no time to just stop. and wait for the rest of me to catch up. i think everyone feels that way. i think it's sad sometimes that that's just how our society is these days.

this man is SO relatable. except i am rarely in the woods so when he talks about it, it reminds me of the thoughts i have when i'm looking at the stars. "everything looks as it did before i came, as it will when i am gone. ... i see how tentative and insignificant i am" and also "for all that can be told by this height by looking, it might still be 1903—or, for that matter, 1803 or 1703, or 1003." i guess nature, or for me the stars, is like removing yourself from the human concept of time and space. i was outside staring at the stars every midnight and it's like time would just stop existing. not stopping. just stop existing. time passed but not in a quantifiable way. honestly it could've been 5 minutes or an hour i wouldn't know. but once i looked long enough i'd see the infinity of the stars and how they're just there for trillions of years or whatever it is, and i'm so lucky because i get to see it, even if it's just a moment in the grandest scale of things. these are the same stars people 100 and 1000 years ago looked at, the same constellations they drew, and i get to see it now. i felt so connected to people from so long ago. i think he talks about time in this way in his essay as well. i didn't really get his ending.

mid-plane-ride thoughts

it’s about five hours in, and I had the windows shut the whole flight, and I decided to draw them up and see what’s out there. the stars are beautiful. there are so many of them, I look out and it’s completely dark, I can barely see where the earth ends and the sky starts, there’s nothing below me but I look up and I see the whole universe I swear. I’m not part of our world I’m floating above it, I am part of the universe. I am part of the stars. they make constellations and I get to see them and I don’t know what’s more beautiful than that. to take something so random, all the stars out there, and draw patterns, give them names, give the chaos meaning. at first glance there’s just some stars, but the longer I stare the more I see until after a while I feel overwhelmed with a sense of depth and infinity. there is an infinity out there and right now I am part of it. soon I will land and go home and go back to my life and get caught up in everything of everything but I am holding on to this moment right now. because even though soon I will touch down, not yet. right now, I am still flying. floating. infinity. nothing feels real and everything feels insignificant but I feel peace. I cant stop looking at the stars. god they are beautiful. we really are all just specks, instants, moments that exist somewhere in this forever of universe. we are nothing but we still exist. isn’t that beautiful too. I love and I cry and I hurt and I laugh and I live. I am alive. I exist. wow. I’m talking to the stars now, they have a comfort to them. nothing feels real but the stars are so beautiful and I want to share it.

The moon orbits the sun because of the combination of two forces: the tangential velocity of the moon, and the gravitational force of the earth pulling on it. If an object was thrown out of the earth, it would eventually fall back down. Throw it harder, and it will fall for longer, but eventually it will come back down to earth. Gravity makes it so. But if you launch it out far enough, it will fall, and fall, and fall without ever coming back down to earth. That’s orbit. A perpetual state of falling. When I see the moon orbiting the earth, it seems so peaceful, so controlled, so…okay. But it’s really just falling indefinitely, falling with nowhere to land, nowhere else to go. It’s constantly torn between its velocity, pushing it to get out of gravity’s grasp, and gravity, drawing it right back in, and it is this exact combination that leaves it falling. What an existence, to be falling forever, unwilling to give in and crash back down but perpetually bound to a gravity that doesn’t let you fly free.

to me, two years ago

I forget you exist, sometimes, but moments like these remind me you have been there all along. Moments where I realize I went a whole day without thinking about you, about him, about it all. Moments where I still come to the end of the day and can’t quite get myself to do anything. It is in these moments that I remember you, quiet, lonely, scared. 

We’re really not so different. The sound of his breathing still sets off a panic in my stomach that doesn’t go away for hours, just like it does to you. Some days, my mind takes control and it becomes the only thing I can think about, just like you. I still lie painfully awake on the nights my body forgets I am safe this time, just like you do. Sometimes, I think about you, about how many nights I’ve laid here, begging my body to wash itself clean of him. It doesn’t work that way, but you will continue to wish it did. I do, too. 

But there’s so much you still don’t know, so much I wish I could tell you now. I wish I could tell you it wouldn’t always be this way, the fear. I still feel you curled up inside me when he’s around, hiding but still there, but I wish I could show you how okay everything will be. Time heals, I want to tell you. Really. Please stop thinking about it. It only hurts you. Forgetting is an art and you will learn to master it. I know you’ll ask, how can you forget? and I will tell you, how can you remember?

Some days will be harder than others, some months will be harder than others, but nothing is ever over. Nothing was ever over. He did not take something from you, he violated you. You did not lose something, you went through something. Healing is a journey we are still both on, but when I tell you it is a journey you have already begun, trust me. You started healing the moment you went back to your life, lived it as though a piece of you would not be frozen for months. You do not have to be a survivor, I wish I could tell you. You are doing enough. You do not have to speak before you’re ready, confront him if you wish not to, react like health classes tell you to. You exist, and that is enough. Healing is a process, one that will never end. You will be okay, then you won’t be, and miraculously, you will be again. I wish I could tell you I am okay. Somewhere down the road I won’t be, and beyond that I will be. You will get both. You will always get both. 

Somewhere between you and me, you will find people who care. You will sit on rooftops, crying as you tell your friends. Crying, but they are too. Every time you walk past him, they will ask to make sure you’re okay. People will care, and I hope it makes you let them care. Please don’t worry that this will change you. You are still soft, you are still sensitive, you are still trusting and loving and kind. I know you think this will go away, but I will never let anyone take this, just for you. 

You will find peace, even though he will never face the consequences. I cannot tell you how, but you will find peace. Something about karma, I think. Karma is a Taylor Swift song, but that won’t come out till you’re older. Just wait. 

I know you are mad. I know you are hurting. I know you are scared. Please know that I am here, looking back, holding your hand, squeezing three times. That is from a Taylor Swift song you have already heard :)

I am okay. I have found a voice. It is for me, but mostly it is for you. You will be okay. I have made sure of it.

Anger. It’s seen as a bad thing, something that needs to be controlled and suppressed, something that makes women dramatic and annoying. It’s something I always thought of as an unhealthy emotion, something I shouldn’t feel, something I need to hold back. It’s something I didn’t know I felt until someone told me it is okay to feel it. 

It is okay to feel angry, so now I am. 

I am angry when for the third time this month a man follows me down the street, calling me names that make me wish I could be hideous, asking me where I’m going as if planning their afternoon outing, looking at me like their favorite meal when they are starved. I am angry when people around me notice, and walk on anyway. I am angry that every girl I know has felt uncomfortable on the train, has felt on their body the eyes of men who are the reason Japanese phones have shutter sounds. I am angry we are told to tolerate this, told that at least we know we’re attractive, appealing. Being angry about these things is the only way to force it into conversation, to realize every girl is angry too, to make guys confront a reality they do not face. Being angry is the only hope that this will ever change. 

Anger does not make me dramatic. It does not make me hard to be around. It makes me human, courageous, tired, but healing. I see him surrounded by friends laughing at something he said and I am angry. He speaks to me with complete disregard and disrespect, and I think about the power I hold in ruining his life. But then I think about the lies he would overpower my truths with, the lies that spew from his mother to my own, the phone calls about my being a bad person, and I am angry. For someone I hate, but someone I have enough care for to stay silent, to keep digging salt into the wounds he made, to remind me every day that he did not think twice about a night that broke me in ways I do not know how to fix, to act like he is above me and beyond regret, makes me angry. My boyfriend telling me he will stay friends with him because they have known each other since elementary school makes me angry. Being afraid to ask him to pick between us two because I might not want to know the answer makes me angry. Being told I am probably being dramatic and overreacting because he would never do such a thing makes me angry. 

Do not touch me. Do not tell me how to feel. Being angry has taught me to speak, taught me not to tolerate being stepped on for being in the way. Thinking about every other person who feels this behind closed doors and pretty smiles makes me angry, but this anger also makes me realize how not alone I am in my thoughts. This both comforts me and makes me incredibly sad for the collective pain of women.

I do not know what to do with the anger, with the screaming and crying I wish I could do, the breaking and hurting I feel the need inflict, despite knowing better. I wanted to finally stop thinking about this but now I am angry. Being angry is scary, an emotion unfamiliar and uncontrollable. I feel the ball of rage grow in me and wonder what it will say, what it will do, where it will go. I can only hope that it sparks something meaningful, picks the lock in my throat and settles somewhere safely.

I am angry angry angry angry angry. I think I should be. I think I should’ve been for a long time now. I think it is okay.

on being a survivor/victim/person

It was third block, right before lunch on a Wednesday, when I sat in her dim lit, scent infused office. It almost would’ve been nice if I wasn’t on the verge of crying, or speaking. My counselor looked at me like a bird with a broken wing, like she felt bad for me. I’m sorry I cannot help you, it seemed like she wanted to say. Instead, she said things like ‘these things are never the survivors fault’, or ‘it often helps survivors to confront their perpetrator’. I didn’t really think twice about her wording until she tripped on it, starting a sentence with vict- and switching apologetically to survivor. She wasn’t saying survivor because she meant it, I realized. She was saying it because she was trained to. Don’t call them victims, call them survivors. I could already picture the slideshow she learned that from. 

I hate both words. People don’t like that. They don’t know what to call me. It makes them uncomfortable.

Victim implies weakness, brokenness, helplessness. These are all words to describe the moment, not the person. When it happened, I was weak. I was helpless. I was broken. This is true, it would be pointless to deny that. It would also be pointless to deny that I am still these things, sometimes. But it is not pointless, in fact it is crucial, to deny that I am forever these things. When I look in the mirror, I no longer see him. ‘Victim’ walks its dirty shoes over the identity I’ve worked so hard to wipe him clean of, defines me by a night I would do anything to forget, perpetuates feelings I no longer have the energy to carry. People generally understand the hesitancy that comes out of using the word victim. Who wants to be called that, anyway?

Survivor is the recently popular word. Used instead of victim, survivor helps people rid themselves of the guilt of using such an identity-consuming word. Empowered, they say. The word survivor empowers us, or it’s supposed to. But who’s to say ‘survivor’ isn’t attaching the incident to identity as much as ‘victim’ is? Survivor implies power, strength, victory. These are admirable traits, something I strive for every day, and to a certain extent, I do believe this word holds the right meaning. My issue stems from the fact that it creates an expectation of people to be strong, courageous, and powerful after going through something that makes them feel so small. It is okay, I want to tell these people, to let it hurt. To be quiet, to be lost.  Getting through this can be empowering, but it can just be hard, too. Sometimes, it’s just hard. ‘Survivor’ doesn’t capture that. 

Did I survive it, or did I just get through it?

Sitting knees up by my window into the single-digit hours of the night, I remember talking to the stars and asking them this. “Some days I feel more victim than survivor”, I told them. I don’t think the stars had much to say that night. I wish I could tell myself from all this time ago that it’s okay. That I may heal on my own time, in my own ways. Back when I first learned the insignificance of my voice in saying a two letter word, I was helpless. Somewhere down the road, maybe I’ll stand on big stages and unlearn that, empowered. I don’t know. There will always be a bit of both people in me, but for now, I’m in the middle. Not a victim but not a survivor. Just a person who something happened to, a person not brave enough to confront the person who did it, but a person who walked out of my counselor's office third block on a Wednesday and kept living her life. Just a person.

on healing

To heal is to hurt. It is the moment I stop telling myself nothing happened, rewriting denial as defeat in the story I tell myself about that night. It is the realizing my body wasn’t for him to take from, the letting myself cry, the throwing pillows and hurling curse words into them. To feel is painful but to ignore is worse. Only when my knees gave out and gave in to the full weight of what he did could I begin to heal.

To heal is to write, to extract from my mind all the things I wish I could yell and carve them onto a piece of paper, filling my mind instead with an unfamiliar quiet, an unfamiliar peace. It is to let my hands take the lead and form sentences I didn’t even know I wanted to say. To search for a voice and to find one, to stand on a stage with nobody in the audience, screaming to the void “listen to me. I have something worth saying. It is something worth listening to.” To heal is to let myself believe this.

When I dust off my voice, I find his fingerprints on it. I hate this. It makes me want to never speak again. To heal is to accept that I cannot wash away the mark he has made, that I cannot undo the permanence of what he did. To heal is to learn to use this voice regardless.

To heal is to ask for help, to ignore any possible consequences of my honesty, to wear down an image of a life so simple, and to say help me. I cannot do this alone. To heal is to admit that people can make this better, even if just to listen. 

To heal is to forgive. Not him, but me. 

Each day that goes on brings me one day farther from when it happened, and one day closer to never seeing him again. To heal is to smile and laugh, to talk and learn, to hug my brother and put him to sleep each night. It is to remind myself this life and this day has beauty in it, if I just pay attention enough to find it in the little things. 

To heal is to live.

Don’t dress too revealing. Don’t drink around strangers. Don’t act like you’re asking for it. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. These warnings have been passed down uncontested from generation to generation for so long society lost sight of the real message beneath it all: don’t sexually assault. Victim blaming is so deeply ingrained in our minds we call it education. 

Classes cover textbook definitions of sexual assault but not how difficult it is to prove they happened. Teachers instill the importance of ‘no’, but not what to do when ‘no’ lies limp in the fist of a boy who does not care. Schools emphasize their reporting protocols, but not who to turn to when that isn’t an option. We are armed with facts but not resources, statistics but not stories. 

People find it easier to label a traumatized woman as attention seeking than to call the man who traumatized her a rapist. We are conditioned to believe the comfort of others comes before our own safety. We are conditioned to silence. This culture has perpetuated itself to the brink of normalcy, but a single voice, no matter how faint, holds off the silence. A voice that urges us: stop telling girls to hide their purses and start telling their brothers not to pickpocket. 

we didn't last but we did happen.

you are everything i never knew i always wanted

in the car

i had the radio playing

music i like

the kind that kids my age enjoy

my dad turned it off and played

classical music to make us feel

how he did

as a kid

when his dad played boring music

as if that changes anything for him

but to watch us feel the same 

anger he did

i guess his fist

told the same

story

she told me her family doesn’t believe in being friends with people like me

which is to say the way my heart flutters around certain people is wrong

which is to say the God i believe in doesn’t believe in me back

which is to say i don’t belong here

which is to say i need to leave

which is to say i’ll have to say goodbye

which is to say i have something to lose

which is to say i don’t wanna go

which is to say maybe i’ll stay, maybe i’ll find a way, maybe i can wait it out a bit longer

which is to say deep down i know i belong, if not here, somewhere far away where love is infinite, where family loves unconditionally, where friends have each other’s backs and lovers, well, they can be any two people who notice the stars in each other's eyes and don’t let them fade away

dear ex best friends: there’s so many things i wish i could tell you that i know i’ll never get the chance. the most important being- i love you. i don’t hate you. i don’t tell the story of our friendship often but when i do, most people assume i hate you now, that i’m mad at you and that i don’t forgive you for what you did. it’s not true. nothing can erase the memories we’ve created together over the years, laughing so hard at lunch we believed we’d live to 150 years old together, our future of sitting in a circular wheelchair together, our huge pizza party to celebrate finishing nationals, hiding in the bathroom duing break from our math teacher, spending every minute we could with each other and not wanting to be anywhere else. i could go on forever, but i think you get it. you can take away so much but something that's more infinite than that is the memories, and that’s why i still love you. because i have proof of the people you used to be and the friendship we used to have. i’m sorry for everything i could’ve done to make you guys feel the need to break that, and i hope you guys have forgiven me. if it counts for anything, i’ve forgiven you guys. i won’t lie, it hurt, but then again it should’ve. i like to see it just as proof of the magic we had together, and i’m so grateful we had something so amazing that it hurt that much to leave. it’s hard to watch you guys be so happy now, happy without me, but i promise i mean it when i say i’m happy for you. all of you. i’ve always wanted and forever will want you to be happy because you are all special people who have such a big heart and if i somehow don’t fit in there, that’s okay. just promise me one thing, remember me the way i remember you. 

you know, i’ve always been looked down on

for breaking your heart

how could you do that, they say

how could you be so heartless?

well i’ll tell you why

because you broke my heart

one too many times

until it shattered

into a million pieces

and it had no choice

but to split yours in two

now your friends are mad at me

how dare i touch your fragile heart

but you see, yours is just cut down the middle

duct tape it together

and your fine

i’ve never been a puzzle person

and one million shards of my heart 

is too many to try to piece back together

they’re mad about yours split in two

but somehow

my million shattered shards 

don’t matter like you

i think it’s kind of scary how fall is so beautiful yet everything is dying.

sometimes i feel like a denominator. the smaller i am, the bigger the piece.

i hate the college application process. something about trying to fit your entire life into 650 words, trying to pin your quirks and personality and everything over the past 17 years that have made you the person you are and hope it shines through a couple short essays and test scores. how do i try to tell them that i used to stay up reading in my bed because the words just gripped me and they still do, that i dream about how big my life will be, that once i have a goal i work harder than imaginable, and that i love my baby brother more than anything in the world. 'i love to learn' and 'i'm a hard worker' don't quite seem to capture it. how can words hold the full weight of a person.