{"id":527,"date":"2018-01-22T12:15:12","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T17:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/?p=527"},"modified":"2018-01-23T20:12:19","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T01:12:19","slug":"a-story-like-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/2018\/01\/22\/a-story-like-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"A Story Like Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"474\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">here is my entire \u201cA Story Like Mine\u201d poem from today\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/WomensMarch2018?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#WomensMarch2018<\/a> in NYC tw: rape \/ assault. Thank you. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/l3fji73woM\">pic.twitter.com\/l3fji73woM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; h (@halsey) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/halsey\/status\/954807991785611264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 20, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><em>We highly\u00a0recommended watching Halsey&#8217;s incredible\u00a0performance. If you are unable to listen, you can read the\u00a0transcript full transcript below via\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/articles\/columns\/pop\/8095257\/halsey-womens-march-speech-poem-a-story-like-mine-video\">Billboard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span>It&#8217;s 2009 and I&#8217;m 14 and I&#8217;m crying<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Not really sure where I am but I&#8217;m holding the hand of my best friend Sam<\/span><br \/>\n<span>In the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood<\/span><br \/>\n<span>The air is sterile and clean, and the walls are that not grey, but green<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And the lights are so bright they could burn a whole through the seam of my jeans<\/span><br \/>\n<span>My phone is buzzing in the pocket<\/span><br \/>\n<span>My mom is asking me if I remembered my keys &#8217;cause she&#8217;s closing the door and she needs to lock it<\/span><br \/>\n<span>But I can&#8217;t tell my mom where I&#8217;ve gone<\/span><br \/>\n<span>I can&#8217;t tell anyone at all<\/span><br \/>\n<span>You see, my best friend Sam was raped by a man that we knew &#8217;cause he worked in the after-school program<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And he held her down with her textbook beside her<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And he covered her mouth and he came inside her<\/span><br \/>\n<span>So now I&#8217;m with Sam, at the place with a plan, waiting for the results of a medical exam<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And she&#8217;s praying she doesn&#8217;t need an abortion, she couldn&#8217;t afford it<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And her parents would, like, totally kill her<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It&#8217;s 2002 and my family just moved and the only people I know are my mom&#8217;s friends, too, and her son<\/span><br \/>\n<span>He&#8217;s got a case of Matchbox cars and he says that he&#8217;ll teach me to play the guitar if I just keep quiet<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And the stairwell beside apartment 1245 will haunt me in my sleep for as long as I am alive<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And I&#8217;m too young to know why it aches in my thighs, but I must lie, I must lie<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It&#8217;s 2012 and I&#8217;m dating a guy and I sleep in his bed and I just learned how to drive<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And he&#8217;s older than me and he drinks whiskey neat and he&#8217;s paying for everything<\/span><br \/>\n<span>This adult thing is not cheap<\/span><br \/>\n<span>We&#8217;ve been fighting a lot, almost 10 times a week<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And he wants to have sex, and I just want to sleep<\/span><br \/>\n<span>He says I can&#8217;t say no to him<\/span><br \/>\n<span>This much I owe to him<\/span><br \/>\n<span>He buys my dinner, so I have to blow him<\/span><br \/>\n<span>He&#8217;s taken to forcing me down on my knees<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And I&#8217;m confused &#8217;cause he&#8217;s hurting me while he says please<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And he&#8217;s only a man, and these things he just needs<\/span><br \/>\n<span>He&#8217;s my boyfriend, so why am I filled with unease?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It&#8217;s 2017 and I live like a queen<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And I&#8217;ve followed damn near every one of my dreams<\/span><br \/>\n<span>I&#8217;m invincible and I&#8217;m so fucking naive<\/span><br \/>\n<span>I believe I&#8217;m protected &#8217;cause I live on a screen<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Nobody would dare act that way around me<\/span><br \/>\n<span>I&#8217;ve earned my protection, eternally clean<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Until a man that I trust gets his hands in my pants<\/span><br \/>\n<span>But I don&#8217;t want none of that, I just wanted to dance<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And I wake up the next morning like I&#8217;m in a trance and there&#8217;s blood<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Is that my blood?<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Hold on a minute<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>You see I&#8217;ve worked every day since I was 18<\/span><br \/>\n<span>I&#8217;ve toured everywhere from Japan to Mar-a-Lago<\/span><br \/>\n<span>I even went on stage that night in Chicago when I was having a miscarriage<\/span><br \/>\n<span>I mean, I pied the piper, I put on a diaper<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And sang out my spleen to a room full of teens<\/span><br \/>\n<span>What do you mean this happened to me?<\/span><br \/>\n<span>You can&#8217;t put your hands on me<\/span><br \/>\n<span>You don&#8217;t know what my body has been through<\/span><br \/>\n<span>I&#8217;m supposed to be safe now<\/span><br \/>\n<span>I earned it<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It&#8217;s 2018 and I&#8217;ve realized nobody is safe long as she is alive<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And every friend that I know has a story like mine<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And the world tells me we should take it as a compliment<\/span><br \/>\n<span>But then heroes like Ashley and Simone and Gabby, McKayla and Gaga, Rosario, Aly<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Remind me this is the beginning, it is not the finale<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re here<\/span><br \/>\n<span>And that&#8217;s why we rally<\/span><br \/>\n<span>It&#8217;s Olympians and a medical resident and not one fucking word from the man who is President<\/span><br \/>\n<span>It&#8217;s about closed doors and secrets and legs and stilletos from the Hollywood hills to the projects in ghettos<\/span><br \/>\n<span>When babies are ripped from the arms of teen mothers and child brides cry globally under the covers<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Who don&#8217;t have a voice on the magazine covers<\/span><br \/>\n<span>They tell us take cover<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But we are not free until all of us are free<\/span><br \/>\n<span>So love your neighbor, please treat her kindly<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Ask her story and then shut up and listen<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Black, Asian, poor, wealthy, trans, cis, Muslim, Christian\u00a0<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Listen, listen and then yell at the top of your lungs<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Be a voice for all those who have prisoner tongues<\/span><br \/>\n<span>For the people who had to grow up way too young<\/span><br \/>\n<span>There is work to be done<\/span><br \/>\n<span>There are songs to be sung<\/span><br \/>\n<span>Lord knows there&#8217;s a war to be won<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We highly\u00a0recommended watching Halsey&#8217;s incredible\u00a0performance. If you are unable to listen, you can read the\u00a0transcript full transcript below via\u00a0Billboard. It&#8217;s 2009 and I&#8217;m 14 and I&#8217;m crying Not really sure where I am but I&#8217;m holding the hand of my best friend Sam In the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood The air is sterile &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/2018\/01\/22\/a-story-like-mine\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Story Like Mine<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7073,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[64,67,5,531,532,96,100,102,574,105,106,109,110],"tags":[23,503,633,534,636,634,10,637,635],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":530,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}