When your family members tell you your behavior is inappropriate, and you hurt so bad you think you bleed but you don't, it's an illusion, and yet it hurts like it bleeds and you learn to ignore it, you learn to submit to what they think must be proper and you carry your hurt until one day you decide to be yourself and are told that you're inappropriate again. What do you do?

You write.  

When your close friends who you think are your close friends find you embarrassing and don't tell you directly but rather make overt comments and you feel it, you know they don't approve and you're hurting, you wonder if these people are really your friends and what kinds of sad lives they live if they pretend all the time and ask you to pretend with them. You hurt because they can't accept you and you hurt because you have lost them and you hurt because you realize they were never your true friends anyway. And it hurts so bad. What do you do?

You write.  

When your children tell you you're not fitting in their idea of a parent and the things you do and say are frankly not something they wish to hear or see or have their friends hear or see, and you hurt again, you think, "Something must be really wrong with me," and then you understand that you're not wrong, you're you and just because you don't fit into whatever idea your children have about you you shouldn't change you, but it hurts all the same. Oh, it hurts very bad. What do you do? 

You write.  

When the distant relatives that only see you once in a while smile at you and shake hands with you and exchange with you polite nothings about weather and other dull nonsense later inform you via the distant family grapevine that your behavior was quite obscene and immodest and too open, all your jumping up and down and all your exuberant affection that was on display for everyone to see, and you feel like they hit you on your head with a brick and keep hitting you until your feet sink in dirt. What do you do? 

You write.  

When you meet some strangers and joke about something small or pay them a compliment, and they look at you funny and then tell you that they would like for you to please stop talking to them, thank you very much, sometimes in polite tones and sometimes in rude tones, and you're taken aback because you meant innocent fun and you meant to make them feel good, but people are not used to kindness and goodness and goofiness from strangers, and you sink so very low inside yourself, you're hurting again. You don't know what to do with yourself. What do you do? 

You write.  

When society tells you that everything about you is inappropriate, your long armpit hair and your sagging boobs and your nipples that are visible through your unlined bra when you get cold and your pubes that stick out of your bikini for everyone to see and mock at the beach, and that your leg hair is a sign of poor personal hygiene, and that your body is wrong, it's too thin or too fat or too short or too tall, and your skin is too white or too black, your voice too loud, your ideas too daring, your gender too opinionated, your opinions too free. When you hurt all over already, from being kicked around by friends and family and strangers alike, all of them telling you, "Conform. Conform. Conform." When you just want to be you and yet everywhere you turn you're told you can't, what do you do?

You write.  

And when you write, you are you, you grow as you, you get stronger and stronger, so that when next time someone tells you that you're inappropriate, you don't duck, don't shut up, don't shrink, don't step back, don't hide, you look them straight in the face and you tell them, "No, it's you who is being inappropriate for telling me to stop being me. I am me, and there is only one of me, there is no other, and nothing you say will change that." And then you stand a little taller and feel a little more sure about yourself, and you practice this, and you write some more, and practice some more, and you cut out those people who don't get you from your life. They're not worth your time. Remember what darling Marylin said, "...if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

Write. Writing is power.