One in Four

by Lucinda Berry

How many people are walking around in the world with their lights turned off? The switch inside them faded to black? People just like her. Still wearing huge smiles on their faces. Filling rooms with their infectious laughs and bubbly personalities. Still pretty. Still sparkling. Still saying all the same lines. But gone.

That’s what happens when you disassociate from your body. You’re cut off—not just from the bad and the pain. All the emotions,

Women had to be put together if they wanted to be taken seriously. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. But it was the patriarchy we lived in.

one in four girls experience a form of sexual assault by the time they’re twenty-four.

Losing someone you love is huge. Calling it a loss sounds so trivial. It’s so much more than a loss. You lose shoes. Not people.

That’s the thing about trauma. You never get to go back to who you were before it happened. It doesn’t matter how badly you might want to or how hard you try. That person is gone. Along with that life. It’s a marker that forever changes you. And if it doesn’t? Well, then it wasn’t real trauma. Because real trauma? You’re altered forever. Anything else is just a hard time.

Angry white boys—especially the entitled ones—were the scariest mammals.