When Did I Learn How To Be Strong?

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When did i learn how to be strong? Was it when i was 6, when you told me, ”I need you to be strong while we are getting divorced with your dad?” Or was it when i was a kid and you always left me alone to defend myself againist all abuses you had turned a blind eye on? Was it when I around 7 or 8, battling ear infection and severe pain, you gave me painkillers, tossed me in my bed and screamed at me to stop crying if i wanted to be around you? I never forgot how you left me alone to deal with that pain, you could have hugged me, hold me till i was calmer yet you ignored that too…. When did i learn how to be strong? Was it when i was 9, when your own mother turned a blind eye to me getting sexually abused right in front of her face? Was it when i was 10, when u beat me down with a rubber slipper because i went to swimming alone in a wavy sea? You lit a cigarette afterwards, looked down to me in disgust and rage, i knew you could go for another round of beating if you were sure i could take it. You said, ”You deserved that.” When did i learn how to be strong? Was it when i was 15, you all were scared out of your minds and holding onto me as if i was your saviour only because it was a 7.4 earthquake and i was in pure shock to show any kind of emotion? Was it the next day when i ran inside our heavily-damaged house to get us some necessities because i knew that you would never go into that house on your own but gladly chase behind me in wild rage? Was it a few weeks after when we had to go inside the barely-standing house to collect our belongings? Was it a fe months later when we watched them tear us house down because it was a danger to everyone in the area? I wonder if you ever noticed how strong I was, how i never cried, how calmly i watched everything. When did i learn how to be strong? Was it when i was 15 when we had no home but a small container with no bathroom or toilet? Yet it was an upgrade from the tent and we were happy? Do you remember us having to use a big bucket as a bathroom? Was it when i told you i was sexually abused by someone you know and you did not believe me because i was stupid and you insisted that i misunderstood. You never believed in anything i had to say, never stood by me anyways. When did i learn how to be strong? Was it when i was 16, when i noticed i could hang out in another home, doing my homework in peace? I remember hanging out there more than necessary but adults know when a kid needs safe place, they had always welcomed me with wide arms cos we all have that poor kid, right? When did i learn how to be strong? Was it when i was 17 and lost my virginity along my unwillingly stripped clothes? I never meant it to go that far but nobody would believe me so i just gave in because i probably misunderstood that too… When did i learn how to be strong? Was it when i was in my 20s, fighting teeth and nail to save all my failing relations, trying to grow flowers on toxic environments? I wish someone had taught me about red flags, about saving myself first instead of trying to bottle-up all emotions and look strong even when you are falling apart inside because we never show our soft belly to others, we never show any vulnerability. When did i learn how to be strong? Was it when i was in my thirties, dealing with all these forgotten traumas, supressed memories, bottled-up emotions? Taking deep breathes when I am choking down, still offering soltiude and strength to others because funnily enough I had always known how it feels to have nobody on your side to fight for you? When did i learn how to be strong? Was it all my chilldhood when I learnt nobody truly cares about my emotions, my needs so i tend to shut off my emotions, ghost people, play things off? I still do that as an adult, i disappear and i go silent when things get hard. I can’t really ask for help because nobody cares and when i relearn that fact as an adult, then i have to burn down bridges. When did i learn how to be strong? I am so triggered, so emotionally overwhelmed, i want to cry it out, all that pain and memories etched under my conciousness. Yet i can’t cry because i had never been weak… You asked me to be strong, how it backfired on you and everyone else, pretty poetic, almost Shakespeare like, a well-organized manipulation game, a well-played game. This is how self-healing looks like some days, it is messy because you can never clean an old wound without cutting it open again. And i will heal because i had always been strong enough to deal with all trauma and emotions. I am only caught off guard. You should have been the strong one. You should be the one to make sure i would never step into that heavily-damaged building. You should have sat and spend time with me so i would not rebel for toxic attention. I was just a kid that was forced to grow up too quick. This is why i am strong, i am crying and dealing with all these supressed trauma so i can be a better me for my own kids, so they will not have to deal with all these trauma when they get older

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Ugly, Ugly World

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”I am the protector of you, our family, our home,” my son has said to my daughter today, at first, as a mother, I felt proud then fear sank in along scenarios of what-ifs. My first thought was what if something bad happens to my daughter and he feels guilty for not being able to save her from that and have to live with that blame and guilt eating him up all of his life? I just froze, my mind shut off for a second, their conversation blurred and I felt bile rising up. I remembered a very old memory, I guess I was around 8 or 9, I was not even developing so-to-speak. I was walking home with my grandmother, we saw a shephard and his goats, they were so lovely, I remember there was a black baby goat, it was very cute and I stopped to pet it. It ran away to the shephard, he was an old man, around probably 60s. He caught up the goat, saying he would hold the baby for me to pet. I do not remember how the rest of the details were but I remember finding myself sitting on his lap, he was stroking my legs, saying beautiful, beautiful. I remember my grandmother watching it all, without intervening, without telling him to stop, without calling me back to her-just watching, well-knowing I was being assulted and not caring because I wanted to pet the baby goat at the first place. I can’t really remember how I moved away, I only remember the shame, knowing it was all wrong, feeling dirty and exposed, vulnerable in the most terrible way. I now know why she stayed silent, to save her own face, selfish and toxic to the bone. I go batshit crazy when people I do not know tries to touch my kids, I can’t count how many times I ended up simply roaring to the strangers trying to touch my kids. Ironically enough, I had always been called out to be the b*tchy one, grumpy one and so many other names. Society has been teaching us how to ignore sexual assult, look to the other side, play pretend it was not a big deal, never mention it again. Why did I write this tonight? I had been judged many times to cut ties with my toxic blood family. I am only glad I had done that. Can I ever trust these people around my kids when they failed to protect me as a kid? They ignored me, my feelings and labeled me as the rebel, black sheep as if they had never ever played a part in all of these events. I had taught my kids to scream as a no, shrug from touches, slap hands away if necessary. When we go somewhere, we have a very basic rule: stay where I can always see you. Am I overprotective? As a little girl who had been sexually assulted more than one time, I will answer damn no! If you think I am an overprotective control-freak, I am only jealous of you because you had never been assulted and never carried the blame, shame, pain of it. I had been asked a lot of times to write about my own motherhood journey. It is not easy, it requires a lot of mental work, a lot of patience. I am highly aware, my own traumas are blending in my own motherhood, it is an ugly world we live in, I only aim for them to remember their memories; not supress their own memories like I had done. Ugly, ugly world.

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ONLOOKERS WATCHES A GIRL DROWN

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Have you ever stood on a beach full of people, watching them watch a teenager drown in the sea? I did, I was 16. I remember it vividly tonight, it was another memory I had supressed and locked back to the dusty shelves in my mind. I remember that I was walking in the beach, heading where my friends were settled. The panic, screams and yellings made me stop in my tracks, confused. That was not something I had seen before, so many people full of panic. I began looking around slowly, trying to understand what was going on, why was there so much panic. Then I remember gazing into the sea, seeing a hand barely above the water; I had known instinctly what I had seen before my brain could make sense of it: someone was drowning in the sea! Something then came over me, I was moving in auto-pilot, tossing my towel and stuff to the sand, yanking my clothes off and walking into the sea to reach that person. I dove into the sea, coming across with my friends, we looked for that drowning person with the hopes of it was not really that late to save her. We were 16, we were 17. We were the only ones who dove into that sea to save somebody else while all people watched. I always had a very serious dislike about onlookers, the people who has the power to change things but do not change the things because they are selfish, their comfort zone matters to them a lot more than another human/living being can. Tonight, I was thinking about why I could not tolerate onlookers the way other people can, be diplomatic towards them. Then I remembered this supressed memory, I remembered the panic I felt because nobody was helping. ”They will let her drown, they will kill her,” I remember thinking in that moment, walking into the sea alone. That person was a teenager just like we were, she was waiting to hear from the university she had applied. I had never known her, her family said she was a gentle soul, they chose to watch her die in cold blood. We sat on the beach that day with my friends, after God knows how many minutes of eternity, grown(!) men got into the water, to look for the corpse, basicly kicking us out of the sea. We sat down on the sand, watching them try to find the dead body because coming across a corpse while swimming is not something people fancy, right? I remember one of my male friends staring at me, as if I had lost my mind. We were wrapped in our towels and he asked me what I was doing in the sea. I told him that I was looking for her because nobody else did. He said I had yelled at a grown man back in the beach. I had literally no memory of that, I probably looked at him blankly, wondering what we were even talking about. He said the man told me to stay back, because I was a girl and I yelled back to him then what the heck he was doing with it then except telling me not to get in and watching someone else drown? He was taken back with my yelling so much, my friend; we laughed about it, sobbering quickly. He told me that he was proud of me, for my bravery. I never thought I was the brave one, I only saw cowards in that beach but I was not a part of that herd. Another friend said that they found her, they got her out of the water, she looked bad. He said that he was glad that we were not able to find her. ”It would probably haunt us forever,” he said before falling into a deep silence. A lot of things haunt us down, we supress whatever we can and as long as we can. Yet these memories will always resurface to haunt us back down. Now, as an adult, I have been thinking of that day. How one moment can change our perception so much. How much we can change in one day, in a few minutes..I am proud of that fearless, self-less girl who walked into the water, knowing she was never strong enough to save a drowning person but willing to try. It took me two or three years after that day to be able to sleep in pitch dark. I slept with a nightlamp or simply lights on for a really long time. It was just another scar from the supposed-to-be-grown-ups. You can’t trust anyone except yourself. People will always be selfish, prefering to watch someone else drown in cold blood rather than risking their lives. Would there be a risk though, if there were more of them working as a team to save one person? Even now, I find all of these people guilty of her death in my consiousness. What a hypocracy, many of them always bragged about their swimming skills, how skilled they were in swimming. They all blamed her, said she should not have gotten in the sea if she did not know how to swim that well. As usual, they blamed the victim, the dead victim who would never be able to raise up to defend herself. None of them blamed themselves for not saving her. I learnt about victim blaming, fragile yet pompous male ego. I learnt how further people can take things up to cover up their own cowardice. I still believe that if a few of them got into the water with us that day, or a bit earlier than us, that girl could be alive. May be now she would be a mother teaching her kids about kindness, the importance of helping others. May be she would be someone that you smile every day. She could be your friend, your neighbour, your daughter-in-law, your collegue..Who knows? I am sorry that we

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DO NOT EVER GIVE UP!!!!!!

NEWS

Why do i tell you this? Let me tell you my own story. Get your tea/coffee, do your potty break and settle down, that is gonna be a loooooong story. 🙂 Worth-reading I promise. Poetry/writing had always been my true passion; I feel at peace, serene and at ease with everything while writing, it had always felt very easy and natural to me, just like breathing. I remember writing my first poems around 12 and whenever i read back my teenager poems, I eyeroll so hard at my own art. 🙂 Yet I see the beginning of my journey, noticing that I had alwasy had a way with words. In May 2021, I went back to writing in full focus, from the times that are left to me after kids go to bed. I am a mummy of 2 young kids, the only real time is when they go to bed and that is of course if they sleep without any trouble. In June 2021, I published my first English poetry book and the rest just came so fast. Right now I have 8 published, 1 soon to be published and 3 as work-in-progress. I am located in Turkey, it had been a very big disadvantage for me since the beginning of my self-publishing, big sellers like Books-A-Million and Barnes&Noble. I even had to e-mail back and forth for months since I finally managed to get my books in GoogleBooks. In between all of these battles, I had many REAL life people that called my art as a piece of sht, crap, idiotic, etc. I think it was because their broken English was never enough to understand the depth of my poetry and catch up with my wordplays, the joke is on them and to be honest, their lashing outs only made me laugh at them and work harder cos I knew they had always been jealous type. (I come from a very toxic family but at least I know when to shut the f*** up when I do not have anything positive or constructive to say.) So tonight, after 17 months-it felt like centuries- i had that voice in me saying Pssst, you should check Books-A-Million and Barnes&Noble. My first reaction was like pfff, impossible, impossible but i was also curious and dammit, curiosity will be my death. 🙁 I saw my books there. 🙂 I cried happy tears. I self-published with Amazon, I love being in control of my own work, choosing the covers as I like, this is important to me cos all my books carry a different spirit in them, they are very seperate personalities of me and I may have sounded like multiple personalities but when you read the books, the language, the background story of the poems, the in-between the lines will make it clear. To be honest, I do not think I can explain it better. 🙂 So tonight, I am crying happy tears. Another dream that came true because I never gave up. I never listened to that people who tried to drag me down. I had listened to myself. I stayed true to my own heART. IT is paying off. So do it. Never listen to the people who does not inspire you. Listen to yourself, how do you feel when you talk about these dreams? Do you sound like life and magick? Then go after these dreams, always. Much light. CAT

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The Sacred Feminine

NEWS

I am very, very proud to take part in The Sacred Feminine Volume II with so many of my amazing poetess friends! It gives me hope and strength, to be a messenger of the sisterhood! The Sacred Feminine Volume II: An Open Skies Collection:

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PULSE OF POETRY

NEWS

Did i ever mention that i was running a poetry community on Instagram, PULSE OF POETRY which as known as POP ? Well, you need to check it out ‘cos i represent amazing poetry. And every friday, we have Lovesickfriday where we uplift musicians, painters, photographers. so yeah, go and check it out.

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