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Benjamin Button

     I used to be twenty three, but now I am lucky if they call me eighteen. Time is a fiend as she swings her pendulum in a violent whirl that has left me nauseated. She has been cruel to me as I have pulled a classic Benjamin Button from the woman I was becoming with her pronounced chest- deep eyes, curves, and lion's mane of hair to match an untamed spirit; to a much more hesitant, shy, stand-offish girl I've become. I was not always like this. Her chest flatter, her eyes shifting around the room as she fears to look- for someone might actually be able to see her, and try to understand the pain she carries. The pain, or trauma and nightmares of her ghosts past she prays that no one will ever have to experience. 
     She fears the looks of the men as they look at her when she walks down the street. As they sexualize her for the meat on her body, or for her breasts. She is what her body has to offer the world- rather than what her soul is. Or her kindness. She has become merely a walking pleasure to men's desires- the way they tried to take advantage of her as a teenager, or wanted her for her body. It destroyed her. She felt ashamed of herself. There is no emotion that is able to properly encapsulate how bitter the disgust is for yourself when you are followed by the men in your neighborhood. Or invited in. Or a guy tries to take advantage of you, and doesn't take no for an answer. 
     You think it's your fault. 
You want so badly to erase yourself to ease the pain that has become you. 
But you can't. You mustn't. 
I don't show affection easily. I don't let many people touch me. I may look younger than when I started this war, and you may think that I am some privileged white girl who has it made in the shade- 
You may think because you're bigger than me you can manipulate me. 
You're wrong. 

This is my life- and I am taking it back. 

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