Rise Up, Don't Back Down

Imagine that you have are paranoid and you have been since you were a teenager. Imagine that you’ve been threatened by your abuser not to tell anyone what happened. Imagine that you were threatened by the same person that he would sue everyone that helped you, telling you that you were “brainwashed” so much that you second guess your telling others what he did to you.

Imagine that you watched the Presidential election and the person who was elected bragged about doing things to women that should never have happened. Imagine that you did not sleep well for the months before Inauguration Day, believing that the FBI was in contact with your abuser and the new President and that they were considering killing you or arresting you for telling others about what you went through.

Terrified? Yes. Confused? Yes. Paranoid? Absolutely. Hopeful? Not until today.

These are all real things that have happened in my life, especially in the recent days.

I reached out to my mother this morning, crying and very paranoid that the FBI and the President are after me personally. My mother started saying “Watch the news! Watch the marches! There are millions of women fighting for us, for civil rights.”

And so after I hung up with her, I turned the news at my boyfriend’s house. And that is the moment that I began to feel hopeful again. As I watched the women and men stand up for women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, healthcare rights and the myriad other personal reasons that people gathered together to fight for true freedom, I felt HOPE again. I felt that part of me that has been fighting for validity and a voice gaining strength by watching the marches and the amazingly large numbers of people out there.

I wish I could march, but in my mind, as I walked home from the bus stop a few minutes ago, I was marching. My paranoia is way too large to be in such crowds, but I am marching in my mind in solidarity with women, men, people with disabilities, people with different races and LGBT brothers and sisters.

Stand up. Don’t Back Down. Keep fighting.