How strong and courageous it is to be tender and compassionate in the face of vitriol and violence; when the world would have you succumb, when it would be easier to not care. You are the strongest of all who dares to love the hand that hates you.

- C.C. Navarro

My body is not my enemy. There is no war beneath my skin, no battle to be won. Within the walls of my chest, there is no shrapnel. It is all in the mind. The plague that has been planted there; the seed of doubt; the poison filling the ears. The war-torn battlefield is not the body, but the words used to describe them.

- C.C. Navarro

You tell me my value is in my negative space; I don’t have as much as I should. My worth is measured in what isn’t there, but I have too much. It’s no wonder I feel so vulnerable and exposed. I have more to give but I’m only worth what I don’t have. That’s no way to view a person. No wonder my existence is painful. My hips have a little too much sway to them. My breasts have a little too much volume. The curves of my body outline the frown on others faces. My body is crippled by its own desires. The word I fear to hear and am ashamed to be. I wish you had never told me. I didn’t know my lack of value until you showed me.

- C.C. Navarro

If life is an echo, then whisper carefully the words of love, so they can reverberate back to you and wash you in their tender touch, but beware of harsh words, because they will bounce back, hard bricks, and break you into dust, to blow away in the wind.

- C.C. Navarro

Before I die, I want to experience pure bliss, fleeting moments of exquisite joy that dance in your stomach and make butterflies jealous. I want to taste the night sky, drink in all the stars and get dizzy on moonshine, and believe for a moment that I am one of the cosmic beings that take shelter in the velvet vastness of midnight. Before I die, I want to feel something beautiful as strongly as I feel this ugliness inside me, I want to know something as pure as this disease is vile. Before I die, I want to be cured.

- C.C. Navarro

Your humor is a dark one, because I know that for every laugh you’ve received, a piece of you has died.

- C.C. Navarro

I am a small soul. I go unnoticed in crowded places, I’m always talked over and cut off, I’m stepped on and belittled, but I smile, because I am a small soul. I am all the love in the world condensed into a tiny sun. I am unbreakable and kind. I radiate positive energy to make sure no one feels the way that I do.

- C.C. Navarro

I died and was reborn a creature of suffering. This mold has made of me chaos-born and unbreakable, diamond strong. I may not know who I was, but I know who I am.

- C.C. Navarro

I let a man treat me like I was less than, like I was only worth enough energy to say that I repulsed him, like I was too much space in an empty room, like I was too much noise inside his head, like I was the reason he needed to teach me a lesson, like I was the reason he needed to fuck her and then describe it to me. I let a man walk all over me like the dirty pavement was all I was capable of aspiring to be, because I did not love myself and I needed him to prove to me that I was as worthless as my mind made me believe, and he rose to that challenge.

- C.C. Navarro

To the people that made 14 year old me feel like it was my fault: fuck you. To the sheriff that rolled her eyes at me when I finally made a report: thank you for confirming my fear. To my boyfriend at the time and his family, who were convinced that I had cheated and was trying to cover it up: thank you for making me feel so alone when I already felt small and scared and dirty. To the few people that I opened up to that asked me “what were you wearing?” and “were you drinking?”: why do the answers to these questions somehow make me more or less a victim? Why do I need to account for the actions of someone else? Why don’t you ask me what I did next instead of ask if I fought back? Why don’t you ask if I feel safe inside my skin anymore? Why don’t you ask if he is still out there harming other women? Why don’t you ask if I’m okay? Because I’m not. It’s been 14 years and it still hurts every time I catch myself naked in the mirror. It still scares me to be caressed and loved, even by a man that would never hurt me. It still feels like an open wound festering inside my body. I’m not okay, but it’s my own fault, right?

- C.C. Navarro