When I wake, the first thing I feel is his hand, hair balled up in it, smashing my face into my pillow, my mattress. His weight feels immense, or perhaps his strength is, regardless, I can’t move my head, the pressure painful, my neck aching, my nose pressed painfully flat. I flail, uselessly, trying to twist my body around despite the pain, panic granting me strength far beyond my norm. It doesn’t matter though, as he mounts me, legs to each side, prohibiting my movement. He feels massive over me. The adrenaline does nothing to protect me, just allowing me enough strength to hurt myself twisting under him, to tire me, not save me.

Then I hear the sound, fighting harder, inadvertently smashing my own fingers on the headboard as I grab it, trying to pull myself free. The violence of a simple zipper is a terrible thing. I’m deflowered and robbed of my innocence and maidenhood from it alone. I know I’m about to be broken and ruined before I feel the cool air on my butt as my gown is hiked up, exposed. I feel his eyes long before I feel his thumb or finger poke at my ass. My tears and screams do nothing, the pillow instantly absorbing the salty moisture pouring from me, the drool from my mouth. Then he moves, shifting, and I feel so god damned tired and weak and it’s been a minute at most, maybe less. An eternity that will never, ever, leave my mind.

My legs part under his power and size, forcing them apart, defiling me. When the cool air hits my vagina, I scream. It’s all I have left, my voice, as everything else falters. And the pillow takes even that away from me. My hands tear at the wood but the only thing that gives is my fingernails and skin, beaten and bruised as I pull and push to no effect. And then it happens, the whisper in my ear, “Just relax”.

I know the voice, drunken, slurred my mom’s new boyfriend. The one who accidentally walked in on me changing. The one who walked on me getting out of the shower. The one whose hugs linger too long. The one who slapped me for talking back to him. His fingers, wet, slimy with spit, touch me and I want to die. Not him. I don’t know why, I should be wishing he would fall over dead but instead it’s me that I wish to die. But I don’t. Instead I struggle harder to breath as he shoves my face down harder, my nose feeling like it should buckle, and then, a bright light of pain, tearing through me.

Ruined, deflowered, as his urgent thrusting begins. The pain overwhelms me and I’m so fucking tired and I wish I was numb and I simply go away. Not from the pain, but perhaps the shock. I’m there, being rutted in, but I’m not there. I’m in a white space and some other girl is under my mom’s fat boyfriend. Some other girl is having the worst night of her life. Some other girl doesn’t realize this is simply the first night of many. Not me. I’ve gone away.

Eventually he does too, leaving me bleeding, sore, angry, numb, tired, furious, and empty. Empty most of all. Eventually I get up and wash myself, the shower burning my skin pink. The shower head scalds my vagina as I wash it and later, when mom asks why I’m washing the laundry I say nothing. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I sure as hell don’t.

The years go by and I drop out of college and just leave. I can’t take it anymore. His leers, his touches, my mom’s blindness to reality. I leave and hitchhike. I pay along the way with a mix of stolen cash and my body. A few are soft with me, but most aren’t. They see a whore and since I offered my body to them, they aren’t wrong. I learn to avoid the ones who look at me like he did. Even if I offer, they don’t accept. They want to take. A couple more do. I don’t fight and I still get hurt. I do fight and I get hurt again. I learn how, as I cross the country, which to avoid.