CW: sexualization of a child, sexual harassment, assault.
If you or anyone you care about needs help, call 800.656.HOPE (4673) — the National Sexual Assault Hotline. Free, confidential, and available 24/7, or chat at rainn.org/hotline.
It was dormant for decades, waiting for this moment to arise.
It might have been your shell pink toenail polish pulling the goddess from your soul’s depths to emerge fully formed with a powerful voice.
Does not matter where it came from.
It is here.
***
You drive almost two hours for your doctor’s appointments. In the city you live, you must wait six months to see a doctor. You tell yourself you do not mind. You get to go to tony Montecito.
Last month, you were taking a huge gulp of coffee and careened into the actor, Billy Baldwin.
Now, you wait in line in the same coffee shop. The guy in front of you looks vaguely familiar. It is not Billy Baldwin.
Your blood and tissue hold the memory of centuries of abuse. The voice unbidden rises.
You tap him on the shoulder. He frowns at you. No recognition flickers in his bored eyes.
“Oh Hello. Hi. I know you. I recognize your stubby beard and brown leather oxfords. I thought it was you. Remember me?”
He is confused and simultaneously annoyed.
“During our allotted 15-minute appointment, you asked about my medical history. I said, I had precocious puberty, fully developed, adult height, with secondary sex characteristics by age six and a half. It is a rare disorder. It only affects four out of ten thousand girls. Is this ringing any bells for you?”
He sighs, peeks at his phone.
“I told you all that. You turned from the computer. The edges of your mouth curled into a sneer. You finally looked at me fully for the first time. You said, So, you think that makes you special?”
His face is an unreadable mask.
You sputter, stumble, manage to blurt out.
“I was only trying to ask a question. You turned back to your computer to write something in my chart.”
Mr. Doctor pushes forward to the counter, “Give me an oat milk latte, extra hot.”
You follow him and his latte. Stop him on the sidewalk.
“Do you choose to believe my life does not merit care? Do you remember the sirens’ song. Do you plug your ears? Is this so you don’t have to listen? Is that why you wrote in my chart, ‘Too pushy’?”
Mr. Doctor walks away, mumbling, “Too fucking crazy!”
***
You climb off your bike, heading up the ramp to the public pool to pay for your laps. A man with his gut hanging over his orange speedo swimsuit cuts in front of you.
“Oh, my goodness. You. We met at a dinner party last month. Someone mentioned the Epstein files. You followed up with a bad sexual joke. Girls enjoying it, kind of thing. I dribbled my red wine on the white lace tablecloth. You shrugged your shoulders at my ashen face, chuckled, saying, ‘Too sensitive.’
“Mr. Speedo, do you think no one else noticed the lovely Bordeaux turned to vinegar and the fettuccine in cream sauce curdled with your joke’s inappropriate content?”
***
You wait in the Express checkout line, white wine in hand. You feel his footstep onto the tile you stand on. He is spreading into your space.
You hear the goddess voice but do not vocalize, “Really, dude? Aren’t you the one who pulled my hair so hard my neck jerked back? You pushed me into the wall to shut me up. You walked away cursing, “Too needy.” You turned back to spit, “Too demanding.”
The goddess taps your voice.
“Move back, mister.”
***
“Mr. Doctor, do you hear the dead voices of the fifty percent of women who died from heart attacks? Do you see the faces of the hundreds of thousands of misdiagnosed, permanently disabled, and dead women? Their symptoms were labeled as stress, trauma, or attention-seeking behavior when pain crippled them.
You wrote the real cause of their illness: “Too emotional.”
***
You see an expert at the same hospital where doctors diagnosed you with precocious puberty. Now, you have another rare disorder. Your arteries are thickening, thinning, and beading. Little is known about your new diagnosis, Fibromuscular Dysplasia. It affects women. They believe it is due to hormones.
Doctor Know it All orders tests. He cannot tell you why you have had two rare disorders. He is disinterested that you drove four hours and waited six months for this appointment or that doctors here treated you as a specimen almost sixty years ago. He implies your emotions are the cause of the beading and thickening of your internal carotid arteries.
The thimbleful of research suggests it is hormones. You know you are powerful, but even you can’t make your arteries into a string of pearls.
“Doctor Know it All, I think you must have been one of those interns who stood at the foot of my bed with a gaggle of other white coats when I was six, their pockets adorned with scrolling blue embroidery, stethoscopes hung from their necks? I was a little girl.”
He stares blankly at you. He cannot imagine your wrinkled body as a girl.
“Yes, you are oh so much older now. Did you stay quiet as those white-coated interns pushed in on me. Closer they packed in, stole my air and my little girl’s innocence. My head swam. I disappeared. Sure, like everyone else, you just wanted to get a better look. Something rare and different. Now, do you remain silent when men steal a girls’ innocence?”
The doctor snorts. Your pink shell toenails curl, gripping the power you forgot.
“Then did you see me as Aphrodite—fully formed, as a woman on a scallop shell, foam arisen?
Buddy, this Aphrodite is not that little girl-woman anymore. I am so stinking tired of being silenced, sidelined, and sexualized! Mad as hell there is no research or training for doctors because I have female ailments!
Wait. Do you fear my wrath? Do you see me ascend in anger? Is there an ancient memory of Aphrodite turning men who harmed or disregarded her into lions, birds, or shellfish?”
He scribbles in your chart.
“You think I am angry. This is nothing, wait until my sisters hear the goddess within. Wait until we decry all the times you harmed and overlooked our symptoms. It does not matter if we are a daughter, sister, aunt, co-worker, neighbor. If grey hairs sprout from our chin or we are too young to shave our legs, harm is universal. Just wait, until we all grow too tired of swallowing our voice.”
***
Sisters, you know the trickery to conquering things and people: colonialism, misogyny, racism, ableism, ageism, and capitalism. You too can name the reasons that led to your harm. Those reasons rob you of your energy, passion, and hunger.
It would be easier to find one thing or one person to blame. Someone, anyone, just one to punish for all the harm.
You know you deadened your senses to survive. Would it be easier to pin this on one person and exact revenge for the times you swallowed your voice? Shrugged off your desire and needs and ended up in an unlived life?
You condemn the lack of care and consequences for centuries of harm to others and rationalize the harm inflicted on you. After all, those in charge taught you to go along and get along. Be a good girl.
Does your truth and goddess voice still frighten you?
Can you rise with your sisters? You will become too powerful for the system to bear.
Can you hear the goddess whisper to you, now?
What do you know?
***
You know it happens everywhere. On the subway, at a rally with good liberals, at a concert. Yes, it happens waiting in a line, any line. It may just be the encroachment of your space, but it is there, always it is there.
The brush of the hand on your bottom. Your square of air and space trespassed upon. His smirky smile that gaslights you. Your yelp so low, only your soul hears it.
On your way out, he swallows you with greedy eyes. Exhales his lust over you. His final leer, he spits at you, “You caused this.”
You pull your short skirt down, cross your arms over your breasts. Blame your body for inviting the wrong touch.
***
You were chased on the playground for your overripe, early in development body. You came from the wrong side of the tracks or whatever old excuse they use to make you the target.
You are just having coffee by yourself, trying to write.
This guy sits at your table uninvited, he asks, “Don’t I know you, sweetheart?”
You stood alone on the school blacktop every recess. This guy, the uninvited one, is the guy who started the playground chant, “You can’t get me!” He knew you loved a challenge. His crew split off. Each one chanted and ran in zigzags to the chain-link fence, away from responsible adult eyes.
“Mr. Intruder, were you the first? You know, to pull my pants down? Or did you just join the others?”
“I see. It does not count because you only watched. Stood on the fringes and said nothing. So, you count yourself blameless. Was that when you stopped seeing me as human? Was that when you learned to blame a little girl’s body? Then you muttered, “Nine-year-old girls-too sexy.”
He pushes off from your table.
***
“Really, Mr. Doctor, now you want to know the question I tried to ask all those years ago?
No. Your lecture on anxiety because of the early trauma of sexualization is not helpful. My body cannot forget the touch, gropes, slaps, hair pulls, whispers, and the beginning of each of your excuses, “Too….”
Your voice cracks. Fully formed goddess rises from those pink shell toenails. She is taking over from here on out.
“You listen to me. If only there was a dollar for every threat, joke, and act of intimidation. I want a dollar for all the times you did not listen to my symptoms or misdiagnosed me and my sisters. Every time you declared you were the expert of my body.”
To him and all the others, you scream.
“I am an expert on my body!”
Mr. Doctor turns his back, saying coldly, “Why are there so many of you, these angry old women?”
***
You address Mr. Doctor, Mr. Intruder, Mr. Speedo, and all the others:
“Do you fear what you see? Terrified of what I say?
Do I make you quake in your brown leather oxfords?
Do you see the flint and the spark? Do you recognize the fire dancing in my eyes?
This time you are on the stake.”
***
Mr. Doctor stands up in his brown leather oxfords. His white coat shrugs.
“What now?”
You rise, cross your arms, eyebrows knit together.
“All I ask is a dollar for all those times!”
He squints.
“A dollar?”
This time, a sneer curls the corner of your lips.
“Yes. A dollar for all those times. I might finally use those dollars to buy the care I so desperately need for this life-threatening illness. You know, the one that you could have treated decades ago if only you had believed me.
I know my body.”
******
***
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