The worst of it wasn’t the hospital tests or even the doctors’ cavalier words. It was the way I had stifled my own screams. For so long I have kept my pain hidden, underground, so it cannot be dismissed by anyone. Smiling instead of wincing, reporting that I am “fine” instead of divulging the truth of the torture, shielding people from the ache of disability slurs, dreading that my wounds will scare people off. But some days, I just want to scream. My body wants to scream out so loudly that no one can deny it, in decibels louder than a lawn mower. I have waited longer than seventeen years for
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