#Metoo

#Metoo. Girls whisper to large audiences. #Metoo I say. #Metoo but we should really change that. #Metoo but we really don’t know how. #Metoo if you’ve been sexually harassed, assaulted or otherwise abused. So I watch my mother, my grandma, my best friend and a woman from church post #Metoo.

This was a problem long before I was born and perhaps it was supposed to end with my generation but my generation has a lot of supposed to’s. Supposed to have kids but too poor. Supposed to go to college but still working. Supposed to be the next great thing but we’re too busy on cell phones. Just kidding we’re too busy battling the things that the last generation left behind.

#Metoo says the girl that was groped on the bus. #Metoo and we should really change this but we’re still walking home in pairs because maybe two people can fight off the advances of one unless it’s a group, of course, because then we’re screwed. And I’m locking the door to an all-girls dorm just in case a guy walks in drunk. #Metoo because this isn’t just a one-time thing or a few people here and there but a whole culture of #Metoo.

#Metoo #Metoo #Metoo because it didn’t happen just once and I’m just trying to show you that it will probably happen again. Because there are too many #metoo’s to think about. Not yet, but probably one-day #Metoo because even though you haven’t been assaulted or harassed, the odds are that one day you’ll be part of the movement #Metoo.

You’re sitting on the bus with a guy creeping up your leg and you’re too afraid to say something? Well, #Metoo because this turns out to be a popular game. A popular game for middle schoolers. And the girl next to you watching doesn’t say anything because #Hertoo and she doesn’t want to call out attention to herself.

#Metoo I’ve been there. #Metoo and you don’t hear about what happens after. Like how the police get involved but the guy gets away. We should create a hashtag called #Idid because how many guys have gotten away without saying anything. Got to go off free with nothing on their mind.

All this while #Metoo is picking up a bottle and getting drunk trying not to deal with the fact that today she finally put up on facebook #Metoo and ten different women including her mother said, “wait… you too?”

Yes, #Metoo because I’m just another statistic, just another girl- wait woman who has been sexually abused. It’s odd how men are called men and women called girls like we are little and helpless.

Perhaps that is how the men see us but in reality #Metoo. I see myself that way too. After being told time and time again, it would be odd to see myself as anything other than that.

#Metoo but only because he was drunk… as if that made a difference. #Metoo and this time he had a gun. #Metoo and now I’m waking up to nightmares to spiders crawling on my skin and hands touching me before I could say no. Hands that grabbed like angry fists of God.

They were anything but Godly. #Metoo… it was my boss. #Metoo it was my best friend. #Metoo and it was the guy from first grade who I shared my pencil with when he forgot but now he’s six foot two and stronger than I am. #Metoo is so much more than just the words #Metoo.

#Metoo says the thirteen-year-old who was just old enough to post on facebook. #Metoo and we should really change that but there is still pepper spray clanging next to every girl's keys.

You know, just in case. #Metoo is all the girls trying to say yes it’s happened to me but not say the guy’s name because that would be a misrepresentation of justice to out the person who made #Metoo possible. Like the end of T.V. shows. I want to thank Bob and Joe and John Doe for making #Metoo possible. Thank you for your viewership.

#Metoo isn’t just a few girls, it’s every girl- wait...woman- on facebook that I know. #Metoo is the first big movement in my life that says “You’re not alone.” That can’t be right. The first? I’m eighteen! No, it’s right. #Metoo survivors are supposed to keep quiet. Supposed to be ashamed.

Supposed to feel like it was their fault. Supposed to, supposed to, supposed to. Don’t be ashamed of #Metoo, speak out! Don’t give details though, that’s more than they need to know. Just kidding, they already know. The people who matter know. The #Idid knows what he did but still goes to bed sleeping tight.

If all the #Metoo’s had their perpetrator in jail maybe just maybe, I’d be able to do crazy things. Like, go out at night not afraid. If #Idid had a curfew I might even think about wearing that dress I bought to go for a walk late at night. #Idid gets to walk out shirtless and go running. #Metoo gets to wear baggy sweatpants and a sweatshirt two sizes too big and still get honked at.

The teachers pretended that #Metoo is okay, but they knew if she left class that it was because a detective was calling her. For a seventeen-year-old to have a detective, there are more questions than answers and too many answers they didn’t want to hear.

#Metoo is why I’m scared to be a girl. #Metoo is why my curfew didn’t end when I left the house. #Metoo and we should really change that. #Metoo but we really don’t know how. #Metoo but I hope my daughter never sees the post and says that #Hertoo. #Metoo must stop with this generation.