It felt weird to tell them that I needed a hug.
I needed kindness,
I needed someone to believe in me,
Someone to support me,
To listen to me.
Someone to hang out and be friends with.

You were surrounded by a lot of people in the salon.
Everyone was congratulating you.
I was sitting away from you.
Outside the circle.
It was like I was sitting in a box at the theater.

My mother sat me down and told me she wanted to talk to me about something. 
She talked about some embarrassing, incomprehensible things. 
I was having lunch, so I wasn’t really listening to her. 
"Don’t let anyone touch you.”

I got married when I was very young,
As soon as I finished college.
It’s not your classic story of finding out he was a different man after marriage.
Everything was clear from the start.
We don’t really understand the meaning of the other person’s actions when we’re young.

In high school,
I had reached my limit.
I scored 45% because my father forced me to into the science track,
When I actually wanted to take the literature track.
In my last year of highschool,
I switched to the literature track.
I studied hard so I could get into the university I wanted.
I scored 95%.
“You’re still going to study computer science.”

I was eighteen years old,
When my father would hit me and tell me,
“Will you answer back to your husband like this?”
“Will my husband hit me and treat me like this? I asked him.
“He’s going to beat you into pieces.
And if you come running to me,
I’ll send you back to him,” he replied.
domestic violence; physical violence; gender violence; parents; marriage

My father was the first person to touch me.
I used to tell myself that I was imagining it.
When he’d touch me with his leg from behind,
I’d tell myself he was just being playful.

I understood what a period was was,
But not very well.
Mama never talked to me about it.
When I got it for the first time,
I couldn’t tell her,
Because I could never talk to her about anything.

Why hit me for peeing myself,
When she could’ve tried to figure out why I was struggling with it?
Why hit me for putting on lipstick as a child,
When she could’ve just told me not to?
Why hit me with belts, cables and shoes,
When she could’ve reasoned with me?

I suffered a lot in there.
My mother didn’t visit me for 6 months.
No one but her visited me.
My father visited me twice in 10 years.
He wasn’t taking it well.
prison, bullying, parents, gender violence, sexual violence, addiction