it wasn't that i didn't know, it was that when i was younger and noticed how i felt - i decided this was a problem for an older version of myself.
here are two things that are true about that:
1. i understood, innately, without ever being told, it was a problem
2. i understood it wasn't-for-kids. whatever was wrong with me, it was inappropriate, somehow.
it was easy to pick up on that it was wrong, but i didn't understand exactly the "why" of it. the topic was handled like frost. nobody laid their hands on it too-long. i couldn't ask questions about it. google wasn't helpful, either. the same way i didn't have to be told every swear was off-limits: i just knew this-wasn't-polite by instinct. nobody ever said it was bad. but nobody said it was good either, and the silence around it was perfect.
except the jokes. i heard plenty about it from the jokes. and the bullying. it's pretty hard to say i am like that though when your image is a rusted, angry thing. i don't want to be one of those things - what they painted for me, back then. an effigy of sexual deviance, of dishonesty, of depravity. and no other gentle ornament to guide me - just the punchline, dangling, as evidence of others of my kind.
i remember being about 7 and making up a story about loving a girl before stopping myself, harshly, in the middle of a sentence. the thought, ringing in my head: you aren't supposed to do that. i was anxious for weeks after, worried jesus could hear - that he'd be disappointed.
i remember changing pronouns in my stories so they wouldn't be "so descriptive" about other girls. i remember not wanting to go into locker rooms, afraid i was a predator. i remember making up infatuations with boys. this book i'm reading about mental health keeps talking about how, at a certain point of trauma, we train ourselves. i literally wouldn't let myself touch another girl, worried i'd come across as creepy. i was 12 when i started self-harming. it was not an addiction i kicked easily.
"it won't be a problem if we don't look at it." "it's not responsible to expose this to children." "why do kids even need to know this?"
here's the thing: the kids.... know already. and worse: they know how you feel about them.
gamechangershow
pixelskylines
snowghoul
izzy806
gracieabrams
yousharknotpass
