By Freya Kellet

Compliance does NOT equal care.

My love for humanity, for elders, for children, is NOT measured by the enthusiasm with which I submit my body to a medical experiment.

Loving you doesn’t mean that I’m responsible for your health, your feelings, your fear, your decisions, your life.

Loving you doesn’t mean that I owe you anything, especially not the violation of my one body, my self respect, my truth.

Lying to myself, or to you, is not love.

Walking on eggshells around you to avoid offending, or triggering, or “hurting” you, is not love.

Carefully erecting scaffolding around your trauma, or volunteering to become the scaffolding myself, is not love.

Accepting your invitations to feel fear or anxiety or overwhelm, is not love.

Playing along with your stories of brokenness, praising and affirming them, acting out my role in the narrative (again and again), is not love.

Always agreeing with you, is not love.

Love is truth. Love is asking hard questions. Love is an unwavering belief in your potential. Love is knowing that your trauma defines nothing about what is possible for you in this life. Love is seeing your power even when you can’t. Love is being able to say NO, so that when you say YES it actually means something. Love is choosing honesty over comfort. Love is showing you that the chains you’ve been clinging to aren’t actually there. Love is so many things, but it definitely is not found in the sadistic slogans of the government, or Big Pharma, or virtue-signalling waxers.

I love deeply… myself, you, children, my grandmothers, Earth, Life. This is exactly why I stand so firmly in my NO.

The intensity of my dissent is not made up of a deficiency of love, or care, or kindness, or thoughtfulness. Quite the opposite. Do not try and gaslight me to think otherwise.

Repeat the mantras all you want, it won’t work.

Originally published at: instagram.com/freyakellet