I’m scared

I walk to my car after work at night 

It’s only 8 o’clock 

God why am I so scared? 

I put my keys between my fingers as they shake 

I know I’m in a good town 

I live in a good city 

But I’m still scared can’t you see? 

Why?

Why are you scared?

Don’t you think it’s a little overdramatic? 

I mean you have to admit that’s a bit over the top 

It’s unfair to put that label on every man

Why are you scared?
Even if someone was there you wouldn’t have to worry

They don’t want someone like you

I didn’t ask for this 

Don’t you know 

I don’t want to be scared, 

I am not weak. 

If you could come up with a solution that would cut me open and excise every part of me that’s like this, 

By all means go ahead and I might even beg you to do it

I have a sinking feeling it’d be a lot like trying to remove ink from a clean white shirt 

You try and you try and you try 

But you only end up making a bigger mess

I feel like my insides are on fire when I walk to my car at night 

Hoping someone isn’t underneath 

Praying that I can get there,

But don’t you get it by now, getting there is only half of the battle 

How am I supposed to drive without the blinding fear that somebody is lurking in the dark

Waiting for me to take a turn down a dark road

And strike 

It suffocates me and 

I am scared

Scared because that’s all I’ve ever known 

But still, I will not be blamed for other people’s ways 

The way that he tricked me when I was 7 

Like my brain was some moldable putty that he could inject with his poisonous lies 

 Stretched in his hands to really believe that it was a little secret. 

The way that I was pushed around in the back of a movie theatre 

Like nothing, I didn’t matter in that moment, only you did. 

Your frustration built and built and built and it towered over me until I felt like that 7 year old girl again trying to get away from the pain, but how would I know running would only make more of it, and as you made me feel and I mean really feel  your frustration I learned again, that I was just as scared. 

I will not apologize for the way that I am scared 

Because it is very much so not my fault 

And I’ve grown too strong now to be blamed for the years

And years and years

Of abuse, manipulation, violence, and  blame 

That I’ve endured. 

But I can tell you that I’ll try

I’ll work on not being so weak 

Try to see this world as a safe place to be
But Only if you’ll open your eyes and see that I’ve grown so many roses in thickets of dead weeds where my trauma used to be 

I’ll try, but you’ll try too. 

Because in the end

I am weak 

I’m scared

But I’m still strong 

And somehow by God’s grace I’m still here

Trying not to live in fear.