choices

our teeth
have been taught
to keep the words in
because it's better to blend in
than to fight for a losing team.
ask me how many kids
i’d like to breed,
i’ll look the other way
and say i’m okay.
i guess
i should confess,
it makes me depressed.
they say being feminine means being xx
and wearing a dress.
maybe if only i could
change the way i look,
all these people would
stop picking at my wounds.
i’m not sorry i don’t conform
to society's norms,
but i really don’t like the way
my shirts were made
to be buttoned by someone else.
i know you wish
i wouldn’t be this-
believe me, i do too,
but i never go to choose.

i know

your vows were
double-edged swords.
you swore you'd 
the first time your hand
grazed my spine
was so sweet
i can’t believe
you’ve turned into this.
“i love you”
feels like me choking.
“i won’t do it again”
looks like pain.
“i’m sorry”
are words too pure
to be cruel.
the thought of leaving
has me shaking,
but staying

means further hurting.

i blame you

for thinking i could

stay and clean your wounds.

i’m sorry but i need

to take care of me

before i think of you.

it takes time to heal-

i know maybe once I have,

too much time will have passed,

and it might be already too late

to forgive myself once again

for being weak and letting you win.

i know these lingering lies

keep making us tie

in this game

we shouldn't play.

i know how hard it is to let go.

i know how hard it is.

i know.

(YOUNG?) AUTHOR TAG

AUTHOR TAG

RANDOM FACTS ABOUT ME

flaws

when i was fifteen i was told i wasn’t pretty,
and that my thoughts ran too deeply.
when i was sixteen i realized i wasn’t white,
for someone had pointed it out.
when i was seventeen i was called easy,
but i only wanted to feel pretty.
when i was twenty I was called a prude,
just because i didn’t send nudes.
somewhere along the way i messed up,
and started thinking that being loved
was a synonym for being perfect.
i’m always too much or too little,
too fat or too flat,
too big or too small.
my thighs take up too much space,
my brain is too fast,
my heart beats
one too many times,
and my feet like to wander too long.
i thought i was lost,
and the only way to be found
was to give in to what others wanted.
somewhere along the way i became comfortable
in the knowledge that i was their sometimes,
because i’d rather be something,
than nothing at all.
i wonder how many years it’ll take
until i feel safe
living under this skin
and being truly me.
i don’t fit in that dress,
but do not distress.
i carry the burden of my weight
inside this chest,
i’m sorry, 
i can’t hear your concern-
my crooked smile,
my thunder thighs,
my dark eyes.
i’m not crazy.
i’m worth more
than my number of flaws.
i’m excited because this freak of nature
survived against all odds.
not even your words
will temper this soul.
i wish it hadn’t taken me so long
to learn how to love me, before
letting anyone else drown my voice.

Why diversity matters.

One of my first memories is of me crying to my mom because my Barbies were all white (this was before diversity hit the kid's stores) and my skin was very brown, just like my Syrian ancestor's skin had been way before my grandmother came to Argentina.
My white-skinned mom then decided to buy a black doll to show me that I was pretty too, sat me in front of a mirror and made me look at my reflection next to the toy that looked like me until I didn't flinch. I'd stared at it, my mouth opened and showing off the blank space where my first tooth had fallen from a week ago. And then I bawled my eyes out, threw the doll at her and shouted that wasn't a real Barbie. I thought that because the doll was black it was somehow less than my blond, blue-eyed dolls.
I grew up, I forgot about Barbies. I found books. I remember how I begged my mom to read me every night before bed. I remember my favorite book and how I'd know all the words by heart, I'd read it so many times. I remember the thought tickling my brain like a bug that wouldn't stop buzz-buzz-buzzing. Why are all these girls so white?
By the time middle school came around, I'd found that some TV shows and books did have girls like me. They were very few, and I had to hunt them down, but I was a skilled seeker and I'd found a few great ones that I could put on repeat, repeat, repeat.}
Until my two siblings came out of the closet.
I didn't understand exactly what it meant to be gay, and I didn't like how people would snicker when I slipped and said my brother had a new boyfriend, or that the girl my sister was hugging wasn't just her best friend. I decided to stop talking about two of the people I love most in the world because I just couldn't deal with so many people asking me if I was a lesbian too (hey, queerness MUST be infectious, right?) I didn't even know how sex worked yet, hell I didn't even know if I liked sex at all, and I was already so afraid of being gay.
When I started high school, gayness was something most people understood and I'd learned to shut my mouth just in case any homophobic assholes wanted to make a joke out of my family. But, hey, life's a bitch. I found out I had a sex development disorder. I was a freak of nature. And to make matters worse, my syndrome was taught during every Biology class I had to take during school.  When they made jokes about the funny looking "thing" (because that definitely wasn't a girl!) in the photo the textbook showed to explain... me, I learned to keep the words in. Lucky me, I'd learned to hide so well nobody knew.
Fast-forward a few years and I'm finally learning to love myself, and the brown skin that's wrapped around me, and the syndrome that I kept hidden during my younger years. Now, even though I consider myself hetero, I never flinch when someone asks me if I like girls.
I think I'd have been less afraid to speak up when I was younger if there had been more characters like me (and like my relatives and friends) in the books I read. I'd have been less afraid to raise my hand and say "hey, I have that syndrome too!" if a TV show like Faking It had been popular around my peers.
I wish I'd known back then that gay and black and different aren't insults.

Hair & Society

I'm sorry if this is TMI, but I have to get this off my chest.

You see my hair and me... we go WAY back. I didn't HAVE hair for most of my teenage years due to an undiagnosed syndrome (meaning, I didn't have functioning ovaries that could make my body develop... or grow legs or armpit hair) so when I got my period (at age 18) I was more than excited. Blood came and I was like "WOW, I'M A WOMAN." (Yeah, society made me think if I didn't bleed every month I wasn't a "woman") and then hair came and I was like "OMG WHY DO GIRLS DO THIS SHIT EVERY FEW WEEKS?"

Over the course of three years I've tried EVERYTHING. Plucking or threading makes my pores bleed because I have sensitive skin and that shit is painful, shaving decorates my leg with beautiful ingrown hairs that hurt like a bitch. So either way, I was fucked up and doomed to a life of PAIN.

I start classes again tomorrow (It's summer where I live, so we just came back to school from our 3 month vacation) and I decided to pluck those bastard hairs like they're the demon itself.
Aaaaaaaand I got an allergic reaction. Swollen pores, itchy skin, hot-red legs.

As I was crying and searching for my meds, I thought, why do I even TRY to make the hair that naturally grows disappear? 
The answer is simple. Because I feel prettier that way.

For a moment, let me say this: Society imposes standards that are IMPOSSIBLE to achieve. Like, I have to have TONS of hair on my head, eyelashes and eyebrows and NONE everywhere else? It doesn't work like that! IT GROWS EVERYWHERE. I shouldn't feel less than beautiful weather I chose to shave or not.

But of course society made me feel my whole life like it hurts to be "pretty".