On Being A Dangerous Woman
In 2015, you couldn’t pay me a million dollars to fall in love ever again. My boyfriend of 8 years felt suffocated in our relationship, and had ended it just before Christmas 2014. I was sexually assaulted by a co-worker just two months later. There wasn’t room in my broken, traumatized heart for anything other than pain.
As someone who has always prided herself on her great capacity to love and nurture, you can imagine how trapped I felt. I had wholeheartedly embraced my feminine side, and threw myself, put everything into my relationships. I loved with my soul. Naturally, wearing my heart on my sleeve and freely sharing it made me vulnerable to getting hurt. Being betrayed in such intimate ways made me want to curl up under a rock and never love again. Dangerous Woman, Ariana Grande’s third studio album, changed that.
“Don’t need permission / Made my decision to test my limits / ’cause it’s my business / God as my witness” — Dangerous Woman
“Dangerous Woman,” my defiantly feminist anthem, reminded me how to be fierce and unapologetic in my life and in my relationships. It encouraged me to be my best and strongest self, and to push through the fear of love I had developed through the trauma. I remember being on vacation in Las Vegas with my best friends, dancing to it along train tracks. It was the lightest and most free I had felt in months.
The thought of falling in love with someone else was becoming less and less of a scary notion, and the song empowered me to explore that feeling. That same vacation, I was stumbling along the Strip drunk, and resolved to let myself fall in love with someone I had been resisting for months. “Dangerous Woman” let me set those feelings free.
“In slow motion / can’t seem to get where we’re going / but the hard times are golden / ’cause they all lead to better days” — Be Alright
The next promotional single Ariana released was “Be Alright.” The healing process after surviving sexual violence is difficult and painful, and I didn’t think I would be able to get through it. Seeing a counselor to help with the trauma of sexual violence and taking escitalopram (a.k.a. Cipralex/Lexapro) helped me see the lighter side of things again.
I could never change the fact that I had been assaulted, or that my heart had been broken. But instead of letting those negative experiences change me for the worse, I pushed myself to channel that energy into creating positive change and into pouring love into my life.
“Be Alright” helped shape my perspective on my trauma. Instead of blaming myself for my assault, and pitying myself for it, I transformed it into something positive. I learned how to love and nurture myself, cultivating a sense of self-love that helped heal the pain that I endured the year before. Learning how to take care of myself and treat myself gently expedited that healing process, and my self-love became the armor and invincibility I would need to be a vocal advocate against sexual violence.
“So baby, come light me up / and maybe I’ll let you on it / A little bit dangerous / but baby, that’s how I want it”
“Into You” is still my favorite song off of Dangerous Woman — a perfect pop anthem that was my soundtrack of last summer. I would blast it on repeat while driving across the highway after spending Friday nights with my friend-turned-crush getting high and kissing for hours.
We had known each other for years and he’d had feelings for me for forever by the time I came to terms with my own for him. He was a very precious and dear friend to me, and our time together, given my previous heartbreak and trauma, felt healing and magical. “Into You” captured that magic perfectly, and reminded me how good being in love felt.
Being in love was risky; opening myself up emotionally and sexually to someone new was even moreso. Our romantic relationship came to an end when he betrayed me in the worst way, and once again, I was faced with heartbreak. Knowing that I had been through and survived much worse helped me be resilient in that pain. As devastated as I was in the aftermath, I’m still grateful that I ever had a chance to feel the way I did.
Dangerous Woman was a life-changing album, and it holds a lot of personal meaning to me. Ariana helped me embrace my femininity, and taught me how to be unapologetic and free. She’s given me the strength I need to be a vocal feminist, and reminded me about all of the good things in life.
Naturally, I can’t help but feel broken about the attacks in Manchester after Ariana’s concert this past weekend. I saw her live back in March, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I felt so much love and light after my show, and for someone to take those feelings away from her and her fans after her performance in Manchester and replace them with terror, death, and pain is beyond cruel.
That someone would have the nerve and wild disregard for life to hurt people in a space as sacred as a concert truly breaks my heart. Ariana has changed me for the better and has helped me overcome the hardest challenges I’ve had to face. I hope that she and my fellow fans can move on from this brutality, and use the pain to fight back against the fear and cruelty sown by these attacks.
Baby, don’t you know? All of ’em tears gonna come and go. Baby, you just gotta make up your mind — we decided we’re gonna be alright.
