In the Comments She Is Called Beautiful

You have to blur out a woman’s nipples and never a man’s. A woman’s body is offensive and so it must be censored. I’m so sorry but we have discovered that your body is bad. Your existence is filthy. You are a disgrace. You must be hidden. But do not burden us, we who have had to put up with your worthless existence, with having to hide you, too. The disease of you is too much work. Do it to yourself. Know your inherent disgust so deeply inside of your bones that you swallow the burden of having to be you and having to bury yourself alive for the good of the rest of us.

And so it goes as we try to grow. We accept our ‘distortions’ and make attempts anyway. What other choice do we have? We look for help. We look for relief. We are desperate for a way out.

If you think addiction is some sort of little accident that happens randomly to a few unfortunate souls who can’t handle their shit you are dead wrong. Addiction does not happen in a vacuum or somehow separate from the fabric of the rest of the culture. When this society tells women in a million subtle ways they are trash it is predatory, abusive, and loathsome. What we are born into and forced to crawl on our bare, raw, tired, neglected hands and knees out of while still being beaten back down all the while is nothing shy of slaughter. The deliberate shredding of a human soul the minute she dares to exist.

You can kill a thing quietly. Blood can pool thick on the floor of a crime scene without making a single sound. It happens all the time.

We hide ourselves because we are told it is the only way to live without being a bother to anyone else. We take photos of ourselves and we cover up the selected parts to protect the ‘innocent.’ We do it all to ourselves and we swallow the hate down. All on our own. There is a viciousness in the wine we drink that you would find unbearable. There are voices in our minds you would feel unclean to even think about.

There is a woman in a photograph. She is naked and buried alive. Only her face, her left breast, and her abdomen can be seen not yet covered by the dirt of her grave. Her eyes are troubled and her mouth is silent. Her left nipple is blurred and the caption reads ‘censored.’ In the comments she is called beautiful.