Aphrodite Made Me Do It Read online

  My mother says:

  are you still doing that gay thing? / can’t you just pick one gender to kiss and stick with it? / if you have to like girls couldn’t you at least like pretty, feminine ones? / why are you doing this to me? / maybe you should see a therapist

  My mother says:

  as the mother of a son, I hope people aren’t listening to just one side of the story / yes okay I am also the mother of a daughter but that’s not relevant / rape accusations can ruin men’s careers / women lie about this kind of thing all the time / they lie / and they lie / and they lie

  The night I was raped,

  I walked right past my mother

  and said nothing.

  I was afraid to be

  dusted for fingerprints.

  I was afraid to be called a liar.

  To stop resenting my mother I had to unlearn the idea that our parents are these infallible beings who always know the right thing to do, and do it. I had to realize that she’s more than a mother. She’s a person with unresolved trauma and she’s scared of being alone and she’s frustrated with existence, just like everyone else.

  But this is how children are forced to bear the weight of their parents’ traumas. This is how dysfunction breeds its way into family lines. You forgive your mother for the things she did wrong, because of the things that were done wrong to her. You expect your children to do the same. Everyone’s backs ache under the weight.

  Understanding

  doesn’t have to mean

  granting forgiveness.

  And forgiveness

  doesn’t have to be

  a free pass.

  abridged list of things to let go if you want to be happy:

  old versions of yourself / ideas about who and what you were supposed to be / other people’s expectations of you / societal expectations of you / gender norms / heteronormativity / internalized ideas about what your life is supposed to look like / the idea that romantic love makes you whole / relationships that cause you more grief than they’re worth / people who cross your boundaries / family that makes you feel unsafe or unwelcome / the need to make your happiness look like everyone else’s

  I’m trying to remember

  to make room in my life

  for the person I am now,

  not just the people I have been.

  It’s important not to isolate yourself when you’re healing but it’s also important to be able to sit quietly with yourself.

  - make art

  - plant trees

  - read

  - practice a skill

  - teach yourself something

  - learn to cook

  - go for a drive

  - make a new playlist

  - sing

  - meditate

  - get organized

  - travel solo

  - go for a walk

  - volunteer

  - go stargazing

  - take a long, hot bath

  - declutter

  - go to a museum

  - garden

  - write a poem

  I’m still trying to figure out who I am alone so that I know who I am in front of other people. I will not be the girl who plays dress up. I will not be the girl who masquerades. I will not disappear into every relationship if I know which pieces of myself are worth holding onto that I am worth holding onto.

  Aphrodite tells me that love is like wine. If your cup is already full and you try to add more, it will just spill onto the carpet. Some people try and try and just stain everything. Their fingers are purple with want. She says you shouldn’t open a new bottle if you’re still holding onto an old one. I tell her I don’t drink anymore and she says to me, “You have to let something go. You carry too much in your heart. There’s no room for anything else.”

  HOW TO LET GO

  Materials:

  - paper

  - pen

  Instructions:

  Go somewhere quiet that you can sit peacefully. Breathe slowly. Center yourself.

  Think of the person you need to let go of. Go over the relationship in your head. The good parts and the bad.

  As you reach good parts of the relationship, thank them. Thank them for their space in your life, the kindness and the comfort, the happiness, the support. Thank them and release them.

  As you reach bad parts of the relationship, consider them. Remember why you walked away. Remember your boundaries and your needs. Remind yourself why these moments are things you don’t want to repeat. Send them away.

  With the relationship fresh in your mind, write down what you still have to say. What is keeping you from moving on? Why do you still think about them? What would you say to them if you had the chance to be completely honest without repercussions? Write it down. Write until you have no more words left for this person.

  Read the letter aloud to yourself. Give yourself the opportunity to speak your words. Put them in the air.

  Dispose of the paper in a way that feels right to you, but that gets the thoughts and feelings you’ve written down moving away from you. The easiest method is sometimes to just go for a walk or a drive and to throw the letter away somewhere outside of your home. Trust the universe to carry it the rest of the way.

  The same way

  she rose from the sea,

  you rise like a phoenix

  from the ashes of things

  that no longer serve you.

  You mythic bird.

  You unbelievable thing.

  If love is a door I keep closed, will it be a wound I keep open?

  I haven’t learned

  how to heal.

  I’ve learned

  how to be alone.

  They’re not

  the same thing

  anymore

  but

  romance

  never gets to be

  the biggest part

  of my story

  ever again.

  APHRODITE SINGS OF WAR

  They vilified want but all of us are full of it.

  Even me. Even still.

  I stole the chariot of Ares

  and rode it into battle. I

  did not stay behind to

  bandage wounds.

  I raised armies.

  I hefted spears.

  They sang

  of me in

  Sparta

  and

  in

  Troy.

  To love something deeply

  is to know

  that you will go to great lengths

  to protect it.

  To sing of love

  is almost always

  to sing of war.

  BATTLEFIELD

  a blackout poem of Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield”

  young

  hearts

  demand

  to

  die

  for

  Love

  In Troy

  they fought

  over Helen

  like children

  but Achilles

  mourned Patroclus

  the way a soul

  mourns a body.

  I have seen the best and the worst of the world and I have not let that break me. You will not let it break you either.

  I have played a hand in the crumbling of kingdoms and the humbling of great men. There are those who still spit my name. They call me The Deceiver. They call me treacherous.

  When you fight for what is just, prepare to meet opposition. Remember, it is the good in us that stands in front of what needs protecting. There will always be reasons to back down but there will always be more to push forward.

  You are not required to be small.

  You are not required to be pleasant.

  You are not required to be conventional.

  You are not required to be accommodating.

  You are not required to be submissive.

  You are not required to be merciful.

  You are not required to be q
uiet.

  The stories sought to teach obedience,

  as if every woman must be mistaken for Pandora.

  Men said she was the perfect vessel for evil to enter the world, but men are the ones who wrote the stories. Men wrote the myths down and called them history, and time has dragged them further from the truth. Pandora’s jar became a box. Eve’s pomegranate, an apple. All the details change but one: it is a woman with her hand on the door to Hell.

  No one ever talks about the loneliness that permeated Eden.

  I know why Eve

  stole the fruit.

  I know why Pandora

  opened the jar.

  Can you really say you don’t?

  What would you give up to taste the universe? A rib? A bite? A garden? More, perhaps, but certainly not less.

  When Pandora’s story first met paper,

  they did not even have the grace

  to give her a name

  before they blamed her

  for every evil thing let loose in the world.

  They said we molded Pandora from clay and dressed her in finery. They said we taught her to lie and to deceive before we handed her a jar of evils and sent her into the house of men. But I was in the room where everything happened. I watched Zeus gather the clouds himself. Pandora was made with precision and care. She was made of thunder and of rain. She was hard to look at, like all beautiful things, and hard to part with as well. Before she left, my sisters and I pulled her aside. Athena gave her the ability to create, Artemis gave her the gift of language, and I gave her curiosity and the desire to satiate it. I showed her the darkness in herself and told her she could have it if she wanted it, if she ever needed it.

  And then she did.

  She was not the first woman, but she was the first one I ever let leave with a piece of me.

  They made a monster

  of Medusa as well.

  Hated how loud

  her trauma was.

  Couldn’t believe

  she had the audacity

  not to take it lying down.

  They made a war-ground

  of her body

  so she made one

  of theirs.

  All of us are survivors until we are not anymore.

  Athena and I wailed with grief on the day news came of Medusa’s death. That man held her head up like a trophy and I wanted to smite him for it. I wanted his head for my own. I wanted to open up the earth up and let it swallow everything. The world was full of men who called themselves heroes for crossing boundaries, claiming bodies like prizes. The world still is.

  There is nothing inherently toxic about anger.

  It is hard not to be angry.

  There is no reason not to be angry.

  Like everyone called a woman,

  they say I had no childhood.

  They say I rose from the sea fully formed,

  forced to bear the weight of other people’s desire.

  It’s not the truth, but it’s close enough.

  Not all gods are born.

  Plenty of us rise.

  THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE

  When the world was young, I made a deal with a primordial force in the universe. It offered me something cruel and it was something I wanted. I’d never acknowledged it before. Had always tucked away the thought because that’s how you live with bad thoughts. You pretend they only belong to other people. This thing unscrewed the jar of my darkness and poured it out on the floor between us. It said, you can have this. You can take this but it’s going to change you.

  Time is not linear. I see the beginning and the end of all things now. I know Pandora. I understand Eve. I have been them and I have made them, both. Their stories repeat, as does mine, in the hands of every person who scrambles to be both what they’re expected to be and what they are. Everyone who upends their own darkness and swallows it.

  I took my body to the water and this time when my tormentor came up behind me there was no cowering. No weeping. Only the blade pressed into my palm and the sweat on my brow. Parts of the old stories are true. I washed my hands clean in the ocean and I came out something else, different than before—but blood will do that to you more often than seawater will.

  I feel no shame for my body. I feel no shame for my voice. I feel no shame for what I have left behind. I feel no shame for the love that did not fit. I feel no shame for my grief. I feel no shame for what I have outgrown. I feel no shame for who I have loved. I feel no shame for what I have loved. I feel no shame for the bodies in my bed. I feel no shame for discarding my old name. I feel no shame for disagreeing. I feel no shame for being loud. I feel no shame for taking up space. I feel no shame for fighting back. I feel no shame for my anger. I feel no shame for my defense. I feel no shame for the things I have done to ensure my peace of mind, my freedom, my space, and my survival.

  THE POET SINGS OF WAR

  Once, someone asked me

  why I write so much about airports

  and I said: it’s not about airports.

  It’s about having something

  tangible to miss.

  I don’t know what to call homesickness

  when I’m home.

  People expect all stories of abuse

  to be loud and angry

  but they’re not.

  Sometimes they’re quiet and cruel

  and swept under the rug.

  Your abuser’s past does not absolve them of their abuse. Their depression does not absolve them of their abuse. Your relationship with them does not absolve them of their abuse. How long you’ve known them does not absolve them of their abuse. Your love for them does not absolve them of their abuse.

  My pain is valid

  even when people

  make me feel

  like it isn’t

  even when I

  make myself feel

  like it isn’t.

  I forgive myself for putting on my favorite sweater and thinking of you wearing it. I forgive myself for wanting to talk to you about that podcast we both love. I forgive myself for thinking about when our books used to be on the same shelf. I forgive myself for the poems I wrote about you. I forgive myself for still knowing your best friend’s middle name and your favorite songs for long drives. I forgive myself for letting go of the bad things and leaving all of this behind.

  I forgive myself for the years I kept your phone number afterwards. I forgive myself for wondering if I could retroactively consent. I forgive myself for thinking that if I could want you now, it would make what happened okay. I forgive myself for wondering if it was my fault. I forgive myself for staying so long. I forgive myself for the years it took me to say the word rape. I forgive myself for not telling the people we knew what you did to me. I forgive myself for my silence. I forgive myself for not being angry at you anymore but still being scared. I forgive myself for the mess of my trauma and the years I didn’t know what healing looked like.

  ON STILL HAVING THE OCCASIONAL TENDER THOUGHT TOWARD MY ABUSER

  Even a match remembers

  the moment before it was struck.

  My pain has always deserved a voice and I will not deny it that, but I won’t devote my life to it either.

  Fuck another poem about everything that has hurt me. Fuck another poem that means I have to stand in front of strangers and make a bouquet of my trauma. Fuck another poem that prevents me from forgetting my abusers. Fuck another poem that adds weight instead of taking it away. Fuck another poem about my sadness. Fuck another poem about my emptiness.

  Let me fill the space instead with joy.

  As Aphrodite watches me scrub my bathtub,

  she talks about the ugliness of practical architecture,

  says we forget what beauty is sometimes

  and why it’s important.

  She reads me her personal list of the most beautiful things,

  and there are no people on it.

  She says there’s some dispute over the reason for our creatio
n

  but that it definitely wasn’t to be gilded objects.

  She says, if you were only meant to be beautiful,

  we wouldn’t have put you down here

  in the dirt.

  If my body

  is going to

  grow toward the light,

  I need to let it

  see the sun.

  PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON GENDER

  I used to think girl meant wilting like a rose in the palm of a man’s hand / but sometimes it just means thorn / and sometimes it just means wilting into my own hands / sometimes it means blue and elbow tattoos / lawn chairs and birch beer and lightly scented chapstick / sometimes it means being the knife / and the twisted ankle, bloodied lip / sometimes it means not being the poem or the poet / and choking on glitter / kissing someone else’s hair / playing jump rope with the binary / and politely or impolitely deconstructing boxes / skin tingling at the thought of being called a pretty boy / or a star cluster / sucking the dirt out from under your own nails just to taste where you came from / without ever having to go back there