this brave new world.

Made twentyfour point five six years of self-loathing, yearning, confusion, pain, envy splitting me in half and cascading over the ridges of my solar plexus, forceful modulation into the ether for the first time.

to the little girl in her sister’s sheet-white communion dress, hands fumbling with mother’s red lipstick as she trembles terrified that the cover of night will end before the trance of herself in the mirror breaks, screams into her pillow for the world to fade to black.

to the budding thief, who hones her skills to steal and horde and dress and undress in order to survive, crow-collecting shiny beautiful things, only to destroy them in fury and anguish–ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

to the girl who learns that to succeed she must dig, dig, bury, must contort herself to this box she was born in, must bide her time and beat her brow until she can make her Great Escape, running from something that she has no language to describe and no courage to understand.

to the young woman, free of cage but bound of heart, who seeks every vice but the truth to numb her pain. she drinks rivers. she breaks windows. she builds fires. she climbs ladders. her favorite holiday is Halloween. her only holiday is Halloween.

to her partners, all of them Icarus, beautiful and lovely and dangerous, who felt her swift, sudden, cold callousness, who fatally overlooked the vicariousness of her love — her kevlar vests of strawberry blonde rosewater and mascara.

to me.

I am sorry for the excuses he made. I am sorry for the lies he told. I am sorry for the fear, the shame, the sexual guilt. I am sorry he ignored you, I am sorry for the years you will never get back, and I am so sorry for the difficult road that lies ahead.

this is your precipice. this is your metamorphosis. this is your life.

it’s going to take some getting used to.