“You have a chip on your shoulder as big as Texas, and just daring someone to knock it off.”
That’s a comment someone left on my writing (on Medium.com). A writing I did on what it felt like to be grabbed by the pussy. To be backed into a corner and forcibly grabbed.
The random male stranger who left it first made sure to explain to me that it’s not possible to be grabbed there.
“You would stand a better chance of grabbing belly fat on someone, than you would of being able to grab a woman’s genitalia. When I say grab, I mean to be able to take something in your hand and hold it, such as a broomstick. Be pretty hard to grab something down there, and hold it, like that.”
But it’s that one comment I can’t get out of my mind. It feels like an itchy wool sweater I can’t take off.
It feels like a white hot fury. Like astonishment that leaves you at a loss for words, when words are what typically flood your existence.
I’m not a person who argues. Especially on my writing. My words are so endemic to me, stitched into my very being. I put my writing out into the world and let it go. I don’t tell people what to take from it, or how to experience it.
It’s mine no matter what I do with it, where I put it, or what others filter from it.
I don’t generally argue with commenters. I can’t let one writing take up that much space in my life. I need room to let all my other words spill forth.
But that comment . . .
It feels like being backed into a corner again.
Like I’m taking up too much space in the world.
Like I should be quiet and keep my eyes down.
It feels like now my words are being grabbed, choked off. As if I don’t have the right to be me, or share my story, or speak a very personal truth.
I feel startled. Shaken.
I’ll never let my words be silenced. To do so would be to curl up into a ball and give up.
Yet I can’t right now find the words for that comment.
Other than fuck off. Which might just be the “chip on my shoulder” speaking. But that’s ok.
I refuse to silence any part of me.
allison writes 