They call me Raelyn. I am white; hundreds of tiny brown freckles cover my nose. My skin is like speckled sand, smooth and warm. I was born from a woman of great strength and thought. A woman who knows suffering and pain within her soul, a woman riddled with insecurities one who has been beaten of her confidence and cheated by manipulation. I was born from a man of great strength and thought, a man of wisdom and grace, one who loves beyond the earth’s ends. I was born of a woman and man who divorced. The bearings of being a torn child have wavered any concept of a functional relationship. I am not the divorce, nor the cause, I will never become of it. I know who I’ve come from.

This is my America, the home of the broken. The broken home. I have wrestled with who I am, the core of what it means to exist and I have come up with this: I am a beautiful young woman, a poet beneath the sheets, a quirky day dreaming believer. Naïve enough to believe my God has come and saved me. I am brave yet I am scared. I am human; a girl. I s*** and I shave. I doubt all. I am an American.

Fickle little girl. Groomed and mislead by the molestations of dirty hands. The innocence of my being crumpled up and jaded. This is my America, it dances with alcoholic step dads and drug-ridden peers. It sings with sexual degradation and selfish beings. My America enables ignorant adults to laugh at my conjectures. I ask myself to become better then the gender mold of my family.

The molds that have suffocated the woman of my example will no longer deprive me. I am freed, broken and humbled by the foreshadows of what my life could be. This is my declaration, the recollection of what has bound my most intimate thoughts. I am a strong young woman, a poet beneath the façade, an inquisitive believer. Simply naïve enough to believe the mold, which has been laid out for me, is not mine. I am an American.