I was 8 when I first understood the meaning of hate.

My mom made me go to bed early, so I screamed "I HATE YOU" at the top of my little lungs,

But then burst into tears when the weight of the words landed on my shoulders.

I said sorry more times than I could count and it was okay.

But then I turned 13 and middle school made me wanna look cool,

And since my personality alone couldn't cut it, I cut others down.

So instead of being a giant among men, I was a bitch among dwarves.

Instead of screaming hate, I whispered it.

I didn't apologize as much.

Fast forward to 15, when I learned that if I was going to dish out hate, I was gonna have to take it too.

While I was just hiccuping from my dosage, others were drowning in it.

To think I called myself a lifeguard.

That year, I stopped apologizing.

Blink and I'm 16 and all I heard was hate on the radio.

Rappers spitting objectification with every verse, singers crooning superiority ballads.

It tasted less like power and more like degradation to spit those words out myself.

I stopped needing to apologize.

Now I'm 17, and when will society start apoligizing to me?

Hate has been shoved down my throat since I was a child and even though I've finally learned to close my mouth, the girls around me haven't.

Girls are taught to hate their bodies, their differences, each other.

Society makes life a game and girls tend to always be losing, so they purge or starve or cut or cry until they're numb enough to go beat the competition.

Our words are knives that we sharpen with self-loathing.

We're so scared of losing that we can't stand to see some other girl win.

But instead we all lose ourselves to hate.