Convince Me

According to the DSM, the manual of mental disorders I’m bipolar, because sometimes, I have manic episodes that shoot me up to the sky leaving me feeling high, grandiose and invincible, and then it drops me like my sisters lifeless body falling from the roof of her 14th floor building. Those lows leave me feeling like a hostage to my own sheets that stick so tight that trying to remove them would be like peeling off freshly burnt skin. The despair trying to convince me to kill myself.

According to the men I’ve laid with, I’m crazy because in one moment I’m in their bed, legs spread leaving me feeling the ecstasy of their erection, and in another moment I’m losing my shit demanding that they never call me again the way they didn’t…when they said they would. Their silence leaving me feeling like I were slowly disappearing into quicksand.

The disappointment trying to convince me that my love is nothing more than smoke that disappears in the air, leaving behind nothing more than that nasty ass scent that won’t go away.

According to my mother, “una es madre antes que mujer.”

Trying to convince me that my home is where I belong, as though she doesn’t seem to understand that my roof has collapsed and it’s trying to bury me alive with the all the responsibilities that want to erase any other part of who I am, until I no longer exist.

According to…

According to…

According to…

So many people trying to convince me that I’m the one that needs to be fixed, and NOT the systems that have been put in place by men who need to suppress what I represent.

But I refuse to be convinced that I’m the one that needs to be fixed

Why not instead…convince me that there is something more in it for us…women…mothers by those men that act like boys and the boys who think they’re men

Convince ME that this game called life hasn’t been rigged from the moment I was conceived

By men and power.

Men that are convinced that the decisions to and about my pussy belong to them.

Convince me that women deserve to be raped because of the way they dress.

Convince me that we deserve a man to put his hands on our throats and grip it so tight that we can’t breath…just because he doesn’t like our tone.

Convince me…that it's ok for a grown ass men to get his dick wet with a little girl, who’s barely thirteen.

Convince me that I’m the one that needs to be fixed because I get obsessed…and it's not those men in my life that promise something more but who can’t see or hear me.

Convince me that I must be everything to everyone, all the time, even if it kills me.

Convince me that the voice is nothing more than white noise

Convince me that I don’t deserve to be heard

I don’t deserve to be loved

I don’t deserve to be treated equal

That I don’t deserve to be treated as human

Go ahead…convenience me!

You can’t?

It’s ok…because there are things that I’m already convinced about.

I’m convinced that women possess a power that no man can take or ever understand.

That we CAN create or terminate.

I’m convinced that my voice is a vessel for someone’s truth.

I’m convinced that I’ll right my mothers wrongs by honoring who I AM.

I’m convinced that NO ONE ever really knows what lies in the depth of a woman…of a mother…except for her...only if she’s willing to go there.

I’m convinced that my place is wherever I say that it is and not according to what others say.

Because people have ALOT of shit to say.

But nothing that’s going to help ME progress.

But hey,

What the fuck do I know...because according to others, I’m nothing more than a manic, crazy mother trying to convince you that what I’m saying is just common sense.