I'm Angry

Truth is

Tw/cw: sexual assault

Truth is this my first draft of a paper I've written a million times in my head.

I was raised to see gentlemen and knights and have been disappointed ever since. Even when I was small, there was something about slam poetry that I loved. I think it was a woman's anger. I am angry.

I am sitting in an overpriced apartment in a state hundreds of miles from home. Hitting me in the chest, in the gut, and in the depths of my stomach is the daunting realization that I will never get enough sleep to nullify the constant exhaustion of being a woman in this world.

It's fucking exhausting. That's not good rhetoric, but it is the truth.

I've watched The Hunting Ground so many times. I feel understood by it. These women and families who faced entire judicial systems meant to keep them quiet through the violation of their spirit and their bodies. I feel understand by the simple wording of it— hunted. Why are women always hunted?

I knew the statistics— one of out five women are sexually assaulted in college.

Two out of three. That's my reality.

Two of the women I love the most who got me through the worst. Two of three. One month apart. What are the odds?

I don't have survivor's guilt. I have anger. Where were THEIR odds? How was she supposed to know the church boy would get her too drunk to speak? How was she supposed to find the courage to say no in a city of millions who ignored her pleading eyes as he led her into the cab? Why.... couldn't it have been me instead of them?

How many times can I be disappointed before I can only be angry? How many times will I cry before it matters?

I can laugh when I joke about men being trash, but at what point am I not even good at fooling myself into thinking it's still just a joke?

I can only hope the odds are the same. If two out of three are horrible, then I can try to maintain hope to find just one good one. One man who isn't a hunter.

But I will always be angry.