The 8M always moves me from place

With each passing year I learn more about myself and get to know myself a little better. During the last four years, my 8M posters have been a personal parameter to know what emotional state I am in, because I have learned that the violence and abuse that I experienced are manifested in my mood, personality, character, and other aspects of me as a human. every day of the year in different ways.

Even if I want to, I cannot separate who I am from what I have experienced, because unfortunately the damage they did to me is part of my history. Today I know that it does not define me, today I know that it was never my fault, however, there is a kind of dark aura in my daily life that shapes me, like a bias in my person, like a weight, invisible to the distracted eye but very tangible to my body and heart, which I can't get rid of yet.

I feel that in all my decisions and actions that aura appears in some way, even though I don't even notice it consciously. Sometimes it comes out in very obvious ways that are impossible to miss, like when I burst into tears, but other times it comes out very subtly, like when I want to eat sushi and feel like nothing is going to make me feel good until I don't eat sushi.

So the 8M for me is nothing more than a date in which my fight to be well takes a tangible and corporal form. I make myself present, I share myself, I take my body to the march, I focus all my creativity and energy on expressing my anger and courage but also on the hope that those who come will have a much better time than we had.

Honestly, several times I have felt sick of myself, sick of being “thirst for revenge”, “thirst for justice”. Several times I have questioned my place in the feminist struggle and come to think that I would be much better off if I were not so interested in the subject. It's exhausting to feel upset. But the truth is that that's how I am, my blood boils, I can't stay still, I can't help but feel like this and want to do something about it to try to change things even a little bit. Now I know that my feeling of struggle is real and year after year I embrace this part of me more, with more security and confidence.

This 2023, like every year, my experience was different. It was painful the moment I accepted it, but I could see it very clearly, there would be no justice for me.

It was approximately 10 in the morning on March 8, I went to have breakfast at a little place that is in the corner of my apartment, I ordered coffee, orange juice, some ham and cheese muffins, I also grabbed a donut from the bread basket sweet. I wanted to have enough energy to walk without any problems with tiredness or dizziness.

I realized that I was very nervous, I ate very quickly, in large bites, my hands trembled and I moved a lot in my chair. I knew it was because of the march but it wasn't for fear of some dangerous situation or police repression, my nerves were due to a new thought: “It doesn't matter if it isn't today, history will judge”. And with that phrase they unwrapped and began to spin new reflections. I tell you.

I have been searching for many years to repair the damage I suffered, and no matter how hard I search, I can't find anything that makes me feel better. So many thoughts of revenge have gone through my head that I'm scared of myself, but none of them give me an ounce of peace of mind or satisfaction. I have planned a thousand strategies in my head to make my testimony go viral, I have imagined scenarios where I vandalize his house or his car with the word "rapist", I have thought about how to denounce him legally and personally in his tennis training group, and being brutally honest, in her imprisonment and even in her death. Anyway, but I can't find anything that eliminates or disappears what happened. The damage is already done and I will not find justice, it is the truth. As it is read, as it is heard, as it hurts me: I will not have justice. Because not even his suffering would take away from me the trauma and the consequences that he left me.

Okay, I accept that, and I accepted it as I finished eating my muffins for breakfast. I asked for the bill, went to the stationery store and redid my poster. I wanted to rest before going to the Monument to the Mother but my mind wouldn't let me, I had to put on The Simpsons to get distracted for a while and stop my thoughts.

It does not matter that it is not today, I thought, because the mothers of those murdered will not have justice today, the survivors of psychological, physical and sexual abuse will not have justice today, the assaulted, the violated, the victims of transfemicide, the girls and women indigenous people, fat women, businesswomen and oppressed workers, those who suffered digital violence, street harassment, abuse of power, and countless injustices will not end today, and sadly there will be very few, but very few cases that achieve legal justice or social.

And I understood that I am not fighting to change things today or to change them tomorrow. My fight is personal, just as my feminism is too. I fight from my own story, mainly for me, but also for those who could feel identified. I speak from my position and my privileges, I cannot separate myself from what I am and what I have been, everything that surrounds me has brought me here and I thank myself for never stopping fighting. 

What really let me go this year was that, like every year, I was able to take another step in my healing process. I feel very good to have learned new things about myself and accepted the reality that I find myself in at this moment in my life.

Behind my poster I answered my mom. My mom cares a lot about me, because I'm rebellious. He has come to tell me several times “Oh Angelica, you are not going to change the world”.

I appreciate that we make noise, that we get uncomfortable, that we confront, that we break our silences because thanks to the entire movement (and I am not referring to the "feminist movement" but to the physical movement, to the reactions, to the dialogues, to the coexistence, to the confrontation with ourselves) and the fact that we never stay in the same place we can look at other realities and learn.

Now, 5 days after having marched together with thousands of women, and it could be said that after 5 years of "trajectory" exploring the path of feminism, I am faced with new doubts, new questions, and above all with a great desire to continue learning and confronting what they taught me. I never want to stay in the same place.