An alleged rapist for president

I've gone back and forth a million times on sharing this.  I've considered whether people will think less of me.  I've wondered if I am ready to tell the whole world.
I was sexually abused.
For years.
My innocence was stolen from me by a man my parents trusted. By a man I'd known my entire life.  By a man with three daughters of his own.  By a man who raped a woman in his past and no one believed her.  By a man who spent his entire life degrading women.  Putting us down.  Treating women like lesser beings.  By a man for whom misogyny was a lifestyle.
And today everytime I turn on the news and open an Internet browser,  Facebook, Twitter,  or Instagram,  I am faced with a richer, more educated,  orange version of the same man.
Everything about Donald trump offends me.  His politics,  his words,  his lies and his hypocrisy.  But most of all,  his treatment of women.  On three separate occasions he has been accused of sexual misconduct.  Three different women have come forward.  Two it seems were paid off.  Most recently a woman came forward and accused him of touching her as a child. A child.  A 13 year old child.
For those of you who have never been sexually assaulted as children let me tell you a little bit of what that was like for her.  She hated her body.  She spent hours under scalding water trying to erase him from her body.  She scrubbed and scratched and burned her skin red until she was bleeding in places.
She woke up sweating in the night with his touch on her skin and his voice in her ears.
She cried tears that no one saw.  And screamed into her fists hidden in closests or showers.
She lived in fear that someone would look at her and see her dirty, disgusting  insides.  She spent hours,  days,  weeks,  reliving every single moment and wondering if she enticed him.  Wondering what she could have done differently to keep herself safe.
She heard his threats in her mind while she looked at her loved ones and vowed to never tell her secret if it kept them safe.  She carried the burden of their safety on her little shoulders because she truly believed he would hurt the ones she loved the most.
She slept with the TV on to drown out the sound of her own thoughts.  To drown out the sound her sobs.
She looked in the mirror and she saw a whore,  a slut,  a used and discarded piece of trash where she should have seen ad beautiful blossoming young woman.
And she has spent every day since wondering if she is too broken and too dirty to ever be loved.
That,  is what being sexually abused as a child is like.
That is what the Republican presidential candidate is accused of doing. He is innocent until proven guilty,  but so was my abuser and he too had a history of abuse.  Most do.
That is what you're voting for.....

Silent demons

"You are the embodiment of confidence, raw wit, and security"

That is what my best friend told me one night, when I asked why no one ever noticed when I was drowning in my own anxiety. She told me that while she might see it, and perhaps a few choice others, that I had worked so hard, for so long, to present myself as confident, I had succeeded almost completely.

So, here is my dirty little secret, my mind is a giant, gaping abyss of anxiety, fear, insecurity, and worry.

At any given moment, my mind looks like an internet explorer, with 40 tabs open, 27 of them are blinking and demanding my attention and half of those, are anxieties.

I don't know when I lost the ability to show the rest of the world who I am, maybe I never had it, maybe that is my strongest anxiety. But, I think I do a disservice to myself and to those who know me, when I constantly hide myself.

I am witty, but while you laugh, I will torture myself with funnier things I could have said, I will wonder if you really found me funny, I will wonder if you secretly wish I would leave.
I am blunt, but while I am being blunt I am squashing the voice in my head that says, this is why you will be alone, this is why no one loves you.
I am confident, but it takes me 3 hours and 7 nervous break downs to find an outfit, I have been known to scrub my make up off twice or three times before I am happy and you will never see me leave the house without make up on. Ever.
I am tough, but I want nothing more than for someone to notice that I am barely holding my shit together.
I am independent, but I want nothing more than for someone to tell me that they want me, that they cannot live without me.


I appear to be so many things that people envy, but here is the dirtiest secret of all, those of us who seem to have it the most together, are usually the biggest messes.


So, the next time you look at someone and think, she is too confident, too strong, too independent, remember, inside, she probably needs to hear she is beautiful/strong/loved/needed, more perhaps, than those who are falling apart on the outside.

Genital analogies...

Tonight on the table, vagina one of my favorite things, almost as beloved as the color black and the souls of my enemies, they are super fun to play with and if you play with them right you can bring yourself (and a lucky someone) a world of pleasure.

But, thats not really what I wanted to talk about. For as long as I can remember there is a specific analogy when clam grooming is discussed.

And its fucking weird.

And it needs to stop.

Don't know what I'm talking about yet? In the last decade (or so, because in my head ten years ago was 1995, don't judge me) there has been an increase in the amount of grooming women do to their clams and gone are the days when everyone had a full bush to whatever extent the good lord gave ya. Now? I feel like taking of panties can be full of surprises. will the new toy have hard wood floors, area rugs, or full carpeting? While your grooming habits are a very personal decision, countless blogs, articles, and women's conversations have involved them and there is one phrase I hear over and over and over, if you go bare it "looks like a little girl".
STAHPPPP. Listen, I don't know how much sex ed you had, or in the case of those of you who HAVE a vagina but pubic hair is FAR from the only changes that body part undergoes when your hormone fountains start dumping decades of mood swings, stained panties and salt cravings at you. Nothing about a hairless woman looks juvenile, and its fucking weird when the comparison is made. Stop making another person's decisions "dirty" or "wrong" simply because you don't feel comfortable with them. Its a really intense form of shaming to assign to someone simply because you disagree with their grooming choice.


I realize vaginal shaming is not a cultural war that must be fought on the front lines, but for the love of fuck, if you don't like hard wood floors stop assigning pedophilia feelings on those who do.....you look like an asshole,  and assholes don't get their floors played with, no matter how they carpet them, or don't!