Internalized Oppression

When you love what you are

and come into contact with others

who are what you are

but don’t love what you/they are (together)

it can be maddening.

…particularly if you’ve had to

rip that self love from the sharp teeth of

all-consuming, triple headed monsters that

seek the exploitation & annihilation of your self

for the perpetuation of violent fiction,

the myth of a bottomless belly,

the myth of never ending hunger that must be satiated

by someone who is willing to be treated like something.

…particularly if you’ve had to

tenderly and patiently patchwork quilt that

self love back into/onto your body

with creative threading skills

that don’t always appear coherent to the external eye,

with nurturing touch

 that feels foreign and clumsy at first,

and with compassionate placement

 that takes incredible discipline of the always-suspect intuition.

It can be down-right infuriating

to encounter those who do not love those things you share,

who do not love those things you are together,

and thereby do not reflect back nor deepen

your endurance, victory and worth-fighting-for-ness;

who instead recycle the myths—with their bodies—

solidify some fiction—with their incongruities—

that keep your kind hunted, chewed up, swallowed and spat back up

because after all, it turns out

that monster’s hunger is always bigger than its stomach.

…and yet…

no matter how maddening & infuriating

it might be—this lack of love—

if you love what you are

there is no sense in resenting those

who don’t love what you are in common

because, if it’s really common, even if—no,

especially if

its still in the teeth of hungry monsters,

it’s still what you are, still what you love and

only by lovingly beckoning it out of the mouth of devouring lies

and into the truth of its inherent & unconditional rightness

can you truly claim an authentic self-love, the one

you’ve been living & dying to enact all the days of your breathing,

the one you’re willing to sacrifice for and wait for

and not give up on just because you’re tired.

This is why forgiveness is

still the most generous act

in the recognition of one’s love not loving what’s loveable in common/together,

because if love is love, even deferred love-in-return—

even bad behavior that mocks and spits at the loving-self

because of internalized oppression—

cannot dissuade it.