Smile Pretty Through Broken Teeth

If I wore full makeup, perfectly styled hair, & a lovely outfit I knew I had a better chance of staying safe. My parents expected me to fulfill many roles & one of them was picture perfect victim.

I was to be pleasing to look at or the fights started the moment we greeted. If I looked as nice as I could then they knew I was trying to earn their benevolence & that made them happy. You see, keeping up appearances was more important that how we actually lived. If I looked nice then things must BE nice, right?

But that is not how things worked. No matter how nice I made myself up to look they never changed their behavior. Even though I styled myself to perfection in an effort to earn their nicest treatment, it never did change a damn thing. By the end of any interaction, I messed up my makeup with hot, streaming tears. Maybe that was the goal all along. "let us see her as nice as she can be so we can tear her down even more"? I can't make sense of it.

But what I can tell you is that I knew in my very cells that I was supposed to take the abuse with a smile. I was supposed to act as though the vitriol was sweetest mana and not the shit sandwich they actually served. You see, that is how abusers work. They want us as sweet as pie while they flay our skin. They want us to smile at them as we pass them on the street, they angrily shout at me to smile as I pass by them, as though my face was their playground.

They want us to whimper, plea & beg for better treatment. They want us passive & dainty. They want us to style ourselves perfectly, as the sweetest victim they ever beat. But there comes a time when the abuse is enough. When the gaslighting is in full view & we can name what we see.

This is not stewardship we're seeing. What we are seeing from the GOP is nothing but abuse & they want us smiling sweetly while they do it. They coil at our feet, sinking their venom-dripping fangs into our flesh & they want us to say "pretty please" while they do it.

Like my father, they can drunkenly consume all the resources, deny us any help in our suffering, delight in our pain, cause violence, & STILL they expect us to smile sweetly, sitting perfectly, & wait patiently for the abuse. Not anymore. We see them.

We will label them. We will warn others. And we will stay safe and create a world where abusers don't have power anymore.