aspen-matis

She told me that women who wore makeup had bad values. Putting on makeup would have been a statement__ rebellion. I didn__ try it. I grew to feel guilty for wanting to feel attractive.

It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men.

I wanted him to declare in shock how overlooked and underestimated I had been ever since I was a child. How lucky he felt to be the one to have discovered me, to have me. I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic.

She taught me only how to need to be taken care of. I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions _ to earn my own trust.

It finally had to.I understood that it wouldn__ be easy, it would be very hard; I__ need to resist the habit I had developed long ago _ with conviction. I__ have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threats like a Taser gun. I__ stun them. They__ bow to me. I__ let my no echo against the mountains.

As if violence could make light. Maybe violence could make light.

I had feared this end, wondered where I would go from it, from the moment I first stepped on this footpath in the desert. But I found I was not afraid of reaching it now. I was happy. I hadn't found every answer for where I was going, but I now had all I needed to take these next steps. I knew I would do what I needed to become a writer now.

For all my life, I had been passive when faced with dangers. I was stunned as I swam to find that I had, for the first time in my history, asserted myself and been truly heard__espected. It felt monumental, I was buzzing with adrenaline. It was as if I__ become someone else entirely.I had escaped a kidnapper. It finally felt real. My body unclenched tension in the balmy pool.I was proud of the strength I__ found. I was the one who asserted he take me back; I caused him to listen. I was no longer a passive Doll Girl, trapped. This was me learning I could trust my voice____ used it, and it finally worked! I was triumphant. This escape showed me: I had grown, and grown vividly.

For this entire walk, my desire had ashamed me, as if my wanting to be kissed that night mitigated the fault of Junior's sudden deafness. I'd been given stacks of reasons to blame myself for an act of violence committed by another. I had blamed my flirting for his subsequent felony. My college taught me: my rape was my shame. Everyone I'd trusted asked only what I might have done to let it happen. In my gut, I'd always believed I'd caused it.I finally questioned it.

You don__ need extra food, extra water, extra clothing for extra warmth _ anything extra. You don__ need soap or deodorant. Everything you carry you should need daily.