Unrestored : Not a Monster — A Threshold

Friday, April 11, 2025

For Aileen Wuornos

They called her a monster because she survived. Because she said no. Because she did not perform the feminine apology the world expected from her.

Aileen was not born violent. She was born inside a system that taught her her body was a transaction. That her worth was measurable in glances, curves, validation. She entered cars hoping someone would see her. Not her flesh. Her fire. Her ache. Her wish to be held as someone real. She wasn’t selling her body. She was offering her last language.

Then Selby came. Not a salvation. A threshold. For a moment, Aileen was seen. Not owned. Not bought. Just seen. It was enough to spark something irreversible.

When a man tried to erase her again, she fought back. And when the world didn’t understand the scream in her blood, she turned it into a method: No more hands will touch me without truth.

She did not kill for pleasure. She killed because no one ever told her that love is not a performance. That existence is not something to be begged for.

And when she stood in front of cameras, her mouth dry, her eyes scorched by the centuries of silence behind her, she said no regrets. Not because she didn’t feel, but because her pain was never legible to them.

They euthanized her to make her a warning. But in truth, she was a prophecy: the prophecy of every girl who dared to survive wrong. She was not a monster. She was the system’s mirror, cracked too clearly to be ignored.