Dearest reader– there is sensitive material and language ahead. This warning is here to give you the choice to continue or walk away; I am not offended in the least.
Some people seem to have this idea that we should tame the wild things. Let’s put a tiger in a small box, let’s cut a tree down so it’s nice and neat, let’s domesticate things that were never meant to be owned or altered.
So to the five or so men who tried to tame me, you have failed. You have failed hugely. My soul, my personhood is wide and vast, and beautiful. I am sure you looked at me the way that somebody looks at the ocean and decides to try and stand on it. Indeed you tried.
I won’t apologize for not remembering each and every one of you– my brain has erased some of the memories, for safety’s sake, and I’m grateful for that. It was not for you to stand on my ocean, to take my physical safety from me, to touch a thing that was not yours to touch. And yet you tried to stand, tried to wrench me from my own hands, tried to tame something untamable.
I wonder to myself, why now? Why today? Why do I feel the need to address you? I thought I was past this, beyond fearing closed spaces and people behind me and the darkness and locked doors that I cannot reach. Yet you creep through dark corners of my memory, and I weep for what I have lost.
Today I remembered myself. I remembered that I am wild and wide and strong and full of fire. You did not tame me. You tried and you failed. I am sure, were any of you here to defend yourself, you would have something to say. The trouble is, you are indefensible because I knew you and I trusted you, and I said no. But you didn’t listen, and it doesn’t matter, because you are indefensible. A wild thing is not yours to tame, not yours to own or take.
I am a wild thing. I am a wild woman and I am not yours and I never was. I am mine. Today, I take myself back from you. I will run straight into the ocean, into the great wide open and return to my wilderness. Because I am not yours and I refuse to let you hold on to anything of mine– not a memory, not a scar, not a night. My personhood, my wildness, my body was not yours to take.
But you tried. And you failed hugely. You got nothing from me, and you will no longer sneak through the corners of my memory. I am not afraid of you. Wild things do not fear a spec of dust that floats on the wind.
My wilderness is mine.
Fuck you.
Miss Autonomy
Miss Autonomy 