One more time

My voice is quieter today. I know it should be seething. I should stamp my foot and raise my hands and roar. I am sure I will. Just not right now. 

I am not sure why I even let it bother me. I don’t really even like her. I know she is drunken, barely educated. A hothead who never really thinks through what she says. And I know now I don’t have to deal with her anymore.

But truthfully, after a while it just gets old.

Here is what I need you to understand people. I arrived here on a road, a sincerely hard fought journey. For more than half of that journey I despised myself. Hurt myself. Raged at my being and tried to kill it so I could just pass on to something I hoped would be less painful. Do you think if I could have changed I wouldn’t have just chosen that? Do you know how much easier that would be if it was possible? Maybe it would be for you, but it really wasn’t for me. So I learned second by second by hour by day by week bye year to value myself while society told me how despicable I was. How not even God could love me.  How hopeless it was. I shut my ears and crawled through that shit until I could stand and then until I could step out of that arena completely.

You would think after all that, I would come out bullet proof. Idiot proof. Bigot proof. But underneath my victory strut and my confident woman that little girl still lives. The one who didn’t know why she was different. The one who just wanted to be loved. So I will take a moment and speak to her, with my gentle quiet voice. Then I will get up and chuck one more faux family pretend a friend off to the side of the path as I move on. Yes my voice is quieter today, but I will still kick your ass.