I wrote this a really long time ago

He made a joke about a young fat ugly girl. He Looked at me as though I should laugh along at his joke with him. Feeling like I had to give him some sort of response I just looked away from him and said "okay" in a monotone voice.

He then laughed about how I'm serious, the way he usually does.

I said "yeah". Yeah, I am serious, but he doesn't know the half of it. If I was really serious I would have been yelling at him, or crying. I would have been telling him that it's jokes like that that represent what have been my personal roadblock that prevented me from ever loving myself as a child , and from ever gaining self respect as a teenager. I don't care whatever bullshit someone tries to feed me, learning to love yourself physically as you grow up is crucial to your self esteem, and having self esteem is having power over your mind and body and life. This is a power I have never learned to have, a power I have never allowed myself to have, a power that I feel my culture has tried to tell me that I don't deserve, a power I feel that I've been robbed of.

So I respond passively with "yeah" because maybe I don't love myself enough to stand up for what I believe in, and I don't want to start any controversy, because I don't want to have to listen to him trivialize a struggle I feel so close to and so passionate about, because feeling weak has become my reality, or maybe because I just felt to fucking defeated to be anything but apathetic.

Sometimes I'm disgusted that I think like this, that I identify my physical self consciousness as a problem like it is something I should feel victimized by or bad about, and that I think it is something I should avoid writing about because I am ashamed of feeling this way, that being a girl has been some sort of disease for me.
There is such a huge stigma around being a feminist. Because y'know..feminism is unnecessary or angry or sexist,and women are already equal.
Well if that's true, then why do I have to continually remind myself that I don't really fucking hate being a woman and I only fucking hate what it has been like to grow up as a woman? Why has viewing myself as undeserving and worthless become an automatic way of thinking? Why am I still ashamed to speak up ? Why am I still ashamed of my body? Why do I still feel that I am supposed to take some sort of vulnerable innocent and submissive role?

And most horrifyingly, why am I still consumed by all of this negative thinking when at this point in my life I know so so so much better?

It's really terrifying, really fucking terrifying to realize how big of a mark misogyny,patriarchy, and the gender binary society that we live in has left on me.
And after all the education I have I'm still unable to 'kick' this way of thinking.

So yes, I am serious. And why wouldn't I be?I have something to be really fucking serious about. We all do.