Snake Vessel

*Trigger warnings has crude language, mentions rape, and suicide* ALL FICTION

I’m a girl

I was born a girl, I identify as a girl

I grow up being a girl

Why am I treated differently?

I’m in second grade 

I like wearing my hair up

I like wearing shorts instead of skirts

I scrape my knees up, I get dirty on the playground

I’m friends with more boys than girls

They say “You’re funny for a girl”

I like being funny 

Boys think I’m funny

Girls don’t

Teachers tell me “Why don’t you stay in during recess to play with other girls?’

Parents tell their daughters “Don’t hang out with her, she acts like a boy?”

Why do these things make me a boy?

I’m in sixth grade

I still play in the dirt and wear my hair up

Most of my friends are boys

We get along and I’m treated like a boy with them

I have fun

I’m told “Act more like a lady.” “You should care more about your appearance.” 

I’m in middle school now

I don’t act like a boy anymore

I always wear my hair down

I wear makeup now

It doesn’ feel like my skin, almost as if I’m wearing someone else’s body

The boys don’t call me funny anymore

The boys don’t treat me like one of them but they still like me

Girls don’t

They call me “Slut” they tell their friends “Stay away from girls like that”

I don’t understand you told me to care about my appearance, act more like a lady?

I don’t play in the dirt

I don’t get into fights

I’m still in middle school

We play tag for a class activity 

One of the girls after school calls me over to her and her friends

“Don’t flirt with my boyfriend.”

“I wasn’t.”

They all look and laugh at me murmuring words under their breath

I don’t want to know what they said

I just want to fit in

I’m now at the end of middle school

I get my first “crush”

He tells me he loves me

I can’t respond

I don’t love him

He gets mad at me and we “break up”

A month later I’m a “homewrecker”

He was dating the one girl I had become friends with

More people stare when I walk through the halls

I feel their leers, their taunts

I just want to be liked 

I’m in my first year of highschool

I met two girls that went to different middle schools

We became friends

They called me pretty

I like being called pretty

I met a new boy who became my best friend

He tells me I’m funny and the most amazing person he’s ever met

We talk every night

I was happy being friends

He then sent me pictures and asked for some in return

I said no

He got mad

 “Everyone knows you’re easy, why are you playing hard to get?”

More rumors formed at school

My two new friends showed me a great distance

I ate lunch alone in the bathroom

Why does no one like me?

Is it because I was boyish?

when I’m a more girly i’m not a girl

I don’t understand

I reach the end of highschool

I stayed away from boys 

I walk home at night with keys between my knuckles

A girl in my class was raped

She has to sit in front of him in english

There was no “concrete evidence” against him

He’d face no disciplinary action

The following week I put a teal ribbon in my hair 

All girls wear teal somewhere on their outfits

We show our support 

Teal is a symbol for sexaul assault awareness

Not a single boy wore teal

The girl got bullied online and at school

I heard months after I graduated she committed suicide 

Her parents were religious

They blamed her

I wish I could have helped but

I am a girl, I identify as a girl

I grew up as a girl

And this is girlhood.