Every year, on this day, which should have faded but still feels raw, many years later. I don’t know why it’s raw and why I’m crying still. It should have faded by now, but it hasn’t. Maybe it never will. A scar that never will heal but re-injured when scanning the date.
Every year on this day, I think about what it means to be a feminist, to be a woman. To be in a place of fear. To exist, to have the freedom to exist. To have life.
I think of it often — what it means to be a woman — but remember it this day, the strongest. What an odd, brutal way to think of womanhood this day.
It is seared in my memory — I had so many happy childhood memories, but this was not one. I don’t want this to be a defining moment to remember, but it is. It is.