That day, I was already a little upset.
As I was walking past a coffee shop, a guy riding a bike suddenly rammed into me, on purpose.
None of the men sitting at the coffee shop said anything.
I was fed up with his silly blabber.
He didn’t stop talking the whole ride.
I remembered the stories I heard about taxi drivers.
I had one hand on the handle as he chattered away.
The only indication that something wrong was going on was how quickly everything stopped when someone walked in, and how he told me to not tell anyone.
I used to always listen to him because he was older than me.
The more I thought about it, the less normal it felt.
I told mama when I was in the fourth grade: “He touches my breasts and my behind, and sometimes, he takes off his pants. Is that normal?"
I’m in love with a man who means the world to me.
We’ve been together for 3 years.
He’s married and has children,
But I still love him.
romantic relationships, gender violence, social pressure
“Why did you go there?”
Whenever someone asks me that,
I feel as if they only see me as a piece of meat that should be covered.
I get the urge to just cut parts off my body whenever I walk down the street.
I was on my way to college, and I was in a hurry. I was looking around for an available microbus to get on, when a little boy sexually harassed me.
gender violence, harassment