there is a tiny person living inside my head

and she is a vicious feminist, ahahahahaha.
like, to the point that i sometimes wonder whether or not she might be weakening my ability to see and accept things as they are.

for example:
i seem to have a tendency to overreact when the boyfriend and i disagree on something. i'm just too quick to anger, i guess, which sucks. it means i usually end up saying or doing something that takes it too far, followed by a swift & sturdy guilt trip, a dash of fear, and then ultimately i end up having to swallow my pride & apologize/explain myself. it's just absolute garbage, ahaha. i wish i could turn it off.

now i've never really thought of myself as a girl, in the sense of belonging to the group, "girls." does that make sense? like i identify individually as a girl, but i've never included myself in the picture when referring to "girls" in general.
i think this can be both helpful and problematic; helpful because i think it gives me a decent idea of the outside picture of "girls" in general, but by not including myself in the mix i think it skews my opinion of "girls" into the negative.

i wonder if girls (myself included this time) really are programmed to be more emotional than boys?
are we somehow designed to be more critical of one another than boys are?

see, this is where the tiny feminist gets involved, because she wants to argue that no, gender is learned, it's nurture over nature, etc. the thing is, though, i think her opinion is more what i want to believe than what i actually believe.
is any of this making sense?!

i do believe that men and women are biologically different, and i think there's enough evidence out there to confirm it. so why do i get my back up any time my boyfriend or someone tries to tell me that girls are naturally more emotional than boys?
to be honest, i agree - i do think that girls experience more sympathetic emotions due to different hormones and chemicals in their brain compared to men. but this explanation does not seem to appease the tiny feminist in my head, so i'm not sure how to proceed.

i guess really what it shows is that even though i do consider myself a feminist, even my own personal experience and subsequent subconscious opinion is that of "alpha male" and "omega female." being emotional or gossipy or whatever seem to be considered inherently "female" things, and because of that assumption, i tend to want to fight it. even as a feminist, i subconsciously view these "female" attributes as somehow being negative, or lesser.

not to mention the complete dissociation i often feel with my own gender group, placing myself as "other." and yet, i think a lot of girls do this.
"i'm not like other girls."
why not? what's wrong with being like other girls?

i suppose nobody wants to think that they're just like everyone else.
special snowflakes, the lot of us. i guess it's just a matter of individuality vs. belonging.

anyway, the point of this post was that sometimes i think about how men and women might experience two different and separate consciousnesses. though my tiny feminist and i would love to believe that the flesh doesn't affect the mind, i feel as though that's writing off a whole lotta biological programming, ahahaha.

in some ways, i probably am "just like other girls." and if my tiny feminist got what she wanted, my knee-jerk reaction to that wouldn't be as negative as it is...
strange.

how much of what we do is predestined because of the chemicals in our bodies?
i'd like to believe that "anatomy is destiny" is total bullshit, but sometimes that seems too simple.

sorry, tiny feminist.

i guess whoever cares less in a relationship wins, huh?

the frustration of making the same mistake over and over again and still not catching it until it's too late? yeah, that.

wiping spit from my mouth

so,
you don't think it should be called,
"feminism,"
because it makes it sound
like it's just for women...

okay.

oh, you believe in gender equality -
of course you do, it's 2015!
it's just that... you wouldn't necessarily go so far
as to call yourself a feminist,
per se, because:

1. uhhhhh...
2. well...
3. uhhhhh...

compelling.

why can't we call ourselves
equalists? humanists? or,
the actual word that already exists for the word you're looking for,
which none of you seem to have in your vocabulary,
which is
egalitarian.

(write it down.
i'll wait.)

now,
sit back, relax, and allow me to tell you
a thing.

you
are a feminist.
you
believe that women's rights should be the same as men's rights.
you
believe that women can wear trousers if they so desire,

but you
are deeply uncomfortable
with the idea of a man
in a dress.

you see,
you grew up to be strong and masculine,
and that's why you're afraid that a word containing "fem" -
implying female -
might shatter your fragile sense of who you are as a person
and how you're perceived in the world around you.

no, i understand!
it's the same reason that growing up, you were going to be a doctor!
and even though your little sister's grades blew yours out of the water in math and science,
she was gonna be a nurse!

the same reason that
boys couldn't be ballerinas, play with barbies, wear pink,
or of course cry!

bottling up your emotions until they fester inside you like a pussing infection,
slowly destroying you from the inside out,
crippling your ability to communicate, relate,
and be intimate with other human beings.

hoo!
you're a man's man!

same reason you heard the word "feminist"
and went, "pfff! women's rights!"
without actually bothering to learn about the movement
and everything it fights for to better the lives of both men and women.
even though you'll spend hours online learning about sports statistics,
because uh... you were told they were important?
what else are you going to talk about?

not that you only ever talk about sports, of course,
you also talk about how much you hate it
that men are expected to hold open doors for women,
and men have to make the first move,
and men have to pay for dinner,
despite the fact that you feel completely immasculated
when women actually do these things instead of you...

who needs feminism?!
we need MENINISM!

because NOT ALL MEN rape!
but every women who gets raped must have been asking for it,
RIGHT?

let me know when you're ready to join the conversation
as more than what you were told your genitals made you out to be.
let me know when you stop being afraid.

this
is how a broken social structure
fails both men and women.
this
is why men are growing up isolated
and women are growing up angry.
this
is where i want you to stand
when you are finally comfortable enough to call yourself
both a man and a feminist.

because that
is the moment you can tell me we don't need feminism anymore.

expanded

i wake to the sound of a just-lit match;
burning like fire, falling like a wave.
pulled under by a current so thick, i could float if i wanted to try.
and as i surface in the break of the surf,
i hear the call:
shhhhhhhhhh.

i wake to the sound of a just-lit match;
big enough to swim in, but not enough to drown.

there is a fire in me that i meant to smother,
could have kicked the sand to kill it,
but i swear my ocean was here a minute ago.

i can't watch this turn to embers,
that slow burn will kill me and i know that's the point, but -
if i could just wash it all away, like i was never here.
wipe things clean with all the salt water tears
i will no longer cry.

i don't want to leave ashes for someone to find but -

but the tide recedes and i fade back
into the room.

i am surrounded by the whirring and whistling
of being alive in spite of myself -
i'm told i've been out for days
and maybe my disappointment shows
because the nurse can't look me in the eye.

and my father
walks into the room like a cold wind off the coast,
not the kind that brings storms, no.
the kind that sounds like ghosts, whistling, low,
and i think of the drowned.

i'm sorry i couldn't be there.

instead i'm kept afloat by
tubes, force-feeding life into my blood
because i'm not allowed to eat yet;
there is charcoal in my stomach
and i wonder how many people know.

there is charcoal in my stomach,
on my hands, in my eyes,
ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and
i am tired of mattering.

i search for the call -
but it's gone.
and i'm not.

places like these tease,
trick your senses into crying out
how close you might have been.
when everything tastes like, smells like, looks like, feels like,
sounds like nothing.

this is as close as i've ever come.

i am tangled in a lifeline i never asked to be thrown,
no, please,
send me your anchors.
how can i bear this weight
and still not sink?

i am holding no breath.
folding my lungs into sailboats
scrawled with a message you can bottle
or burn, for what it's worth.

there's a hole in the bottom of the sea.

and i chase the call,
blind to your flares - their flames unwanted -
as i search for the sound of a just-lit match:
big enough to swim in,
but not enough to drown.

wreck of a life

it's been
23 years of a car crash in slow motion,
high definition looping on repeat
until you have it memorized.

i have seen this coming for longer
than i have the words to say.

it started with the words i knew:
a first grade vocabulary screaming out,
"i," and "hate," and "you,"
to the girl in the bathroom with the puffed-up eyes,
locked behind a door that her mother keeps pounding on,
begging me to stop hurting the little girl
in the mirror.

i used to hide in small places
and when i was found, cried,
"i wish i had never been born,"
perhaps where other children
might have had other words.

now i hide in small places
and when i am found, cry
because i still don't have other words.

i could pinpoint the instant i knew this car would crash,
and every moment after drowned out in the feeling
of letting all the air out of your lungs and being too tired
to breathe more back in, of

this idea of getting better, being
somehow restored to right when i have only ever been left
staring down the tunnel toward a sleep less small.

only the good die young,
and i have never been enough
of that.

i have never been anything
but a loose-limbed driver behind the wheel of a thrice-flipped car,
celebrating under confetti glass shards, soundless
in anticipation -

no words now.
no words ever again.