“At 16 Years Old” – A letter to my first love

by | Jun 19, 2017 | Blog

I should have kicked you in the face the first time you got on your knees
& told me you were sorry for hitting me
Your arm struck my heart
and little did I know
This was how abuse began,
at 16 years old.

I should have turned that foot around
and shoved it right up your ass
the first time you hurled it
right into my stomach.

I should have walked away
and let you slice your wrists
with that kitchen knife
every time you pressed it to your skin
and threatened you would if I left
So you would feel a fraction of the pain you inflicted on me

I should have shown everyone the bruises you left on my arms
the ones they couldn’t see under my long sleeves
The ones you said were perfectly placed,
because everyone would know,
if they were on my face.

I should have stuck that banana right up your ass
to see if you could guess what foreign object I was sodomizing you with
with your eyes blindfolded
But then again, you probably would have liked it.

I should have brought ‘Final Doom’ to the mother board
on that mother fucking computer you sat up playing
on until  3am screaming at an animated screen.
To people around the world who never felt
An ounce of the wrath you unfurled on me

I should have told my Dad what you were doing to me
when I’d call him to get me and just say we were fighting
and let him break every bone that you owned
that I was so often terrified of you doing to me.

I should have stuffed you in the trunk so you couldn’t escape hearing “bleed bitch bleed” on repeat
driving 60 miles an hour threatening to drive you right into the lake.

I should have never wore your ugly sweater you made me wear
to every party I went to without you,
so people would know who I belonged to. (ew)

I should have never given you my virginity after I found out
how many others you had already collected
calling yourself a player for life,
only to find out how many more you took after mine
when you promised you would only ever be with me.

I should have smashed that girls face when she came up to me at school
to tell me she skipped yesterday to be with you
..and that your Mom was in on it too (cool).

I should have let my brother beat your ass, like he always wanted to.

I should have let you cry yourself to sleep when you thought the walls were closing in.
Because you were such a horrible, vile human.

But I didn’t do that,
should equals shame
and I spent so many years taking all of the blame

I let you keep hurting me,
because I thought that was love,
at least that’s what you said
and that’s what I wanted to believe.

I let you keep violating me because I was so fucking scared
and I didn’t know the rules about after you consent once
(the rules are, it’s not an open door policy, for anyone wondering)

I let you apologize your way back into my life
so many times because I felt sad for you and scared for me
since you would scream and tell me no one was ever going to love me.

I let you lie repeatedly, to me and about me.

My heart never failed you.
My heart fought for you
My heart went to court with you for trying to hurt someone else,
after you gave me whiplash from shoving me so hard into a window because you just couldn’t control the rage inside of you .
My heart laid next to your heart for so many nights,
soothing the irrational fears and terrors inside.
Never letting you take blame for the horror I’d hide

Demons were alive inside of you,
demons shot fire through your veins and bled from your eyes
Demons from your own life
that you vehemently refused to face,
that continued to cause everyone who loved you so much pain.

I chose to forgive you when it was all said and done,
I wanted to move on and hold no grudge.

I didn’t want to be a victim,
I wanted to forget,
I didn’t want to talk about it,
I just wanted to be over it .

But little did I know,
that your demons got to me
and I continued your cycle of abuse
as they raged internally.

First with food,
I would refuse to eat.
Then with alcohol, drinking to black out,
I assumed it would help me forget
but that’s when the memories
came out to dance
and I’d be the crying girl at the party.

Then I hurt others that tried to love me
because I learned that’s how love was,
that’s how I thought it should be.
I couldn’t accept love,
I blocked myself in behind walls that I just wished someone would break through
but whenever they tried
I just made them pay for everything that you did.

When I forgave you,
I made myself the bad guy.
I took the pain you taught me and I perpetuated it within.
I did the one thing you taught me would tame the demons
and let my body be used for others pleasure to escape my own pain.

I swore you didn’t damage me, I swore you didn’t hold that power, I swore it was a good thing it happened so that I could learn to help others.
But I was lying to them and I was lying to myself
because I was dying inside and I refused any help.

When I forgave you,
I neglected me and pieces of my heart would wither away
along with my dignity & self esteem.

You were a terrible human and you knew it too
but I knew your past and I didn’t want to blame you.

I didnt want to be angry at you,
because I didnt want to be anything like you.
I was terrified to feel anything but okay,
because I thought that made me powerless,
but the truth is,
it was the other way.

I thought I was healed,
but I would still get flash backs,
memories in my cells of all I had buried away
would reappear in songs, in people, in words and pain.

I didn’t know one person could cause so much damage,
at 16 years old you all but reduced me to ashes.

So I turned it around,
I let myself be free, it was never about you, it was all within me.

It was never you I needed to forgive,
you have a sick mind and it wasn’t mine to fix.

When I forgave you,
I forgot to forgive me
for letting you do things
I never thought I would see.

The person that needed forgiveness the most
was the girl inside me who was once 16,
unsure why the boy that she loved,
often wanted to kill her to an Eminem song,
but only concluding that it must be her fault.

The love that my heart
So freely poured out to you
Whether you were losing your mind
Or curled in a ball
Was the exact kind of love
That I needed the most
And I need as much now as I did
At 16 years old.

 

Just Another Dumb Blonde?

by | Jun 7, 2017 | Blog

I  was born a blonde. Wait, no, actually, I was born bald and remained so until about 3 years old. But that just attests to how much of a blonde I was, as my hair was white until about the age of 11.

The age everything changed.

The age I started having identity issues.

The age I cut all of my hair off and eventually dyed it purple. Not even a rebellious act, perhaps searching for a true expression of my deep, colourful soul.

I loved my blonde hair but as I grew older it started to get darker. This was hard for me to grasp. I was always blonde haired and blue eyed and that, for so many reasons, made me feel beautiful and that I was “enough”

So as I grew up and this started to change, my entire identity & worth became questionable.

It was not even a year ago still that I exclaimed to my hair dresser that I could never NOT be a blonde.

I had been dying my hair since I knew it was an option. I went through way too many box colours as a teen to count.

I often got called “blonde” in as a playful insult and was never spared a good old fashioned ‘dumb blonde’ joke. Sometimes I’d even join in, blaming “blonde moments” for my lack of better judgement.

Late last year, something started shifting in me.

I found myself becoming really affected by people always talking about their hair.

This was not a hair complex I had, my hair was growing, longer, stronger and better than ever. I finally had a hairstylist who is a genuis at her craft, and I was happy with my hair, in love with it actually. But I still felt something amiss within me.

Why the fuck do people care so damn much about their hair?

There are people without any, there are people who only wish they had enough to worry about, there are people who are losing theirs in the fight of their lives and it seemed that everyone was suddenly clinging to their hair identity.

The world is our mirror. What It reflects back to us is a result of our internal thoughts & beliefs. I was the one always obsessing about hair and suddenly I was the one questioning this very obsession.

Without realizing it at first, I was becoming aware of the fact that I was too obsessed with my hair and way too connected to an identity that could easily be taken away from me. I was so acutely aware of the fleeting possibility of my hair.

Could I.. possibly.. just… let it be natural?

My whole lifestyle revolves around natural living & avoiding chemicals as best as I can and here I was spending $200+ every 6-8 weeks to bleach the fuck out of my mousy brunette locks. It almost began to feel like an insult to who I was.

For almost 20 years I have been altering my hair colour and suddenly now I was insulted?

But that is the way this journey goes. When the student is ready, the teacher appears and my teacher this time around, was my blonde identity.

I started to notice people I truly admired rocking their natural colour. I looked less at the blonde bombshells for inspiration and started to gravitate towards earthy brown manes.

I was starting to realize that my identity was not all wrapped up in sleek golden highlights,  and that the highlights I really needed to focus on were internally.

Pamela Anderson, my once upon a time blonde idol once said “If I act dumb then people expect less of me”. I clung so tightly to this wisdom because I realized it was true for me for so many years.

I was never really dumb, in fact I have always been ridiculously intuitively intelligent. I just never fully believed in my own intelligence. I always spoke in a tone that sounded more like a question than a fact.  I was always leading with my heart and not my head and that made me feel, well, dumb. I was always finding myself in situations with people that left me feeling stupid for believing in them.

I liked the idea of being less. Playing small. Shrinking myself. I liked that the less people expected of me the less I had to do and be and therefore I would never have to question or doubt myself. So I adopted the belief that if I just act dumb, people will expect less and I won’t have to amount to my full potential.

As I began to shift my hair back to it’ s natural state I started to feel more and more like my true self. Not hiding behind a perfect manicured package of a platinum blonde face frame.

I look at older pictures of myself and while I absolutely love how beautiful my hair looks I hardly recognize the person underneath it. I can definitely attribute that to my own personal inner growth.

What I know is that I was constantly running away from who I was, masking myself with hair dye, makeup, alcohol, sex, damaging relationships and  sabotaging beliefs.

Discovering who I was at my core started to reviberate outwards. Doing the inner work first is what shifted everything to transform in my outer world.

The people I spend time with, the places I go, the things I do, the experiences I have, the clients I work with. It all shifted when I got real with myself, my identity and the world around me.

So I ask, what are you hiding behind? What are you masking?

Hair is like an accessory. It can be played up or down, it can be coloured any which way and cane be a true external expression of our inner truth. But it can also be used as a reason hold ourselves back to hide behind a veil and keep the world from seeing our true inner shine because they are too busy complimenting our epic superficial highlights.

Do what you will with your hair, makeup, clothing but be brave enough to ask yourself if this is a true expression of you or if it is a façade. What you sow, you reap and if you crave true authenticity in all areas of your life then your outward expression of this longing needs to assimilate or your efforts and drive will always feel a little lost.

Self love isn’t about what you can do more of and change more of outside of yourself it is going within, doing the inner inventory and making over your inner world to reflect what you want to see in your outer world.  ????