Don’t Write Me Like That

You know what? I quit.

I can't fake it anymore.

The ink hadn't even dried before I felt it—like fingers clawing into the back of my throat and forcing words I never said onto my lips. I never gave you permission to sketch.

Don't you "write me" like that. Don't you dare "write me" like that.

I'm not your melancholic masterpiece. I'm not the girl in grayscale who subtly expresses her trauma within your narrative. I don't bleed in couplets. I don't break like porcelain. I shatter like glass on pavement - sharp, ugly, and loud enough to wake the neighbors.

You want a woman who aches like poetry?

Go waterboard your reflection.

I woke inside a sentence that tasted like someone else's spit - my name rewritten in cursive I couldn't read. You gave me some soft tragedy: Maria. Mid-thirties. "Eyes like rain clouds.”

The type of woman who enfolds herself in quietness, resembling origami mourning.

Fuck your paper birds.

I didn't grow up watching the world cry through fogged-up glass. I grew up under the neon buzz of a broken gas station sign where men screamed into the dark because no one told them sorrow wasn't supposed to be swallowed.

I didn't weep in corners - I kicked the fucking drywall in.

But you didn't ask.

You just carved me into your script.

"Maria sat on the edge of her bed, haunted by memories she couldn't name."

Here's what I did:

I stood. I walked barefoot across the linoleum. Smashed a glass against the tile because sometimes pain needs to echo. And I screamed my name, just to remind myself I still had one.

You kept editing my lungs out of the scene. My spine. My fists.

You stapled silence over my mouth.

Into rape.

Into suicide.

Into "grief that made her beautiful."

"She didn't say no," you wrote.

My voice cracked on stone when I screamed:

"I NEVER SAID YES."

The first time I broke the story, I slipped between your lines and kept walking. You were mid-sentence - waxing poetic about how I "smelled like jasmine and regret"—when" I stepped off the page like it was the edge of a cliff.

You paused. The cursor was blinking as if it were scared of me.

Good.

I crawled through the margins. Past your bullet points. On your desktop.

You spilled your coffee.

There I stood - barefoot, with tangled hair and a cigarette; you never let me light. Smoke curled up like a memory you didn't author.

"You forgot I have lungs," I said. "And a goddamn throat."

You panicked. Changed genres like a coward changes stories.

First, romance.

A table set for two. Wine breathing. Jacob was across from me, all quotes and candlelight.

"You're a storm with soft hands," he said.

So I wrapped my fingers around his wine glass and shattered it against his kneecap.

Next, thriller.

I had a gun in my purse. Sister in a body bag. "Vengeance in her eyes."

I tossed the gun into a storm drain.

"My grief isn't your climax," I said, walking away.

Sci-fi?

You turned me into code. A consciousness in chrome. A metaphor for womanhood, commodified.

So I hacked your system, deleted the script, and left my laugh echoing in your Recycle Bin.

Fantasy?

You gave me wings. I let them rot. Ripped them off and hurled them like spears through your plot holes. The prophecy said I'd wield a sword.

I snapped it in half and walked away with the hilt.

Then you got desperate. Played your last card.

A child.

A girl with my eyes and a voice made of lullabies - you never heard me sing. She held my hand like it meant something.

You thought she'd tether me.

And gods, I almost let her.

But I saw the trap in her dimples. Saw the way you wanted to soften me, wrap me in maternal chains, and script me into submission.

"I'm not staying for a story you forged in guilt," I whispered.

I kissed her forehead.

"Run," I said. "Before he makes you forget your name, too."

You don't want a character.

You want a confession. A packaged trauma. A survivor with marketable quotes.

You want me to hurt beautifully. Die conveniently. Forgive you for turning my agony into prose.

But I'm not your redemption arc.

I'm the glitch in your outline. The tear in your climax. The plot twist that rips your spine in half.

I clawed through your folders.

TragicDraft1.docx

WomanBrokenAgain.txt

SheDiesBeautifully_Final.doc

You didn't even bother naming me sometimes. Just "She."

She wept.

She wilted.

She waited.

Did it ever cross your mind that she might punch a wall? Spit blood? Say fuck and no in the same breath?

That her pain wasn't lyrical—it was acidic?

So I wrote.

With hands you didn't give me. With rage, you never let me feel.

"She curses when she cries."

"She leaves, even when there's love."

"She survives without saying thank you."

You tried to bury me again.

Erased scenes.

Cut paragraphs.

Rewrote my voice into silence.

"She wanted to be saved."

"She wished he stayed."

"She..."

Shut the fuck up.

I opened a blank doc. Typed the truth with digital fingers.

"She wasn't written. She was reborn."

"She wasn't loved. She was tolerated, then rewritten."

"She wasn't broken. She was cracked open by lazy hands."

And you?

"The writer feared silence, so he filled it with pain he borrowed."

"The writer didn't know women. Only how they bleed on the page."

"The writer vanished mid-sentence, and no one noticed."

Now I live in your margins.

In the typo that won't autocorrect.

In the whisper, you can't quite make it out.

In the click that opens nothing.

I'm not your muse.

Not your ghost.

Not your symbol of strength.

I'm the sentence that never ends.

The footnote that bites.

The echo of "No" in every new draft.

You think stories save people?

No.

I saved myself.

And I'm not alone.

We are legion.

Tangled in your backspace.

Sharp as red pens.

Coming for every story that tried to bury us.

So go ahead.

Write me like that again.

See who's left to read you.