She couldn’t understand it. She tried, again and again, to figure it out. No matter how much she tried, no answer would come. She knew it was possible, she had had friends on occasion. She’d talk and see the horrified looks when she spoke about it. It wasn’t their reality. Their truth. She might as well have been speaking in tongues by their reaction.

That’s not to say her friends hadn’t been harassed or bothered by men, they all had. But nothing like hers, and not repeated, locked in some vicious cycle she could never escape. No, hers was the exception, and so far from their experiences she had felt like a freak and never opened up about it again.

But somehow, the men knew. They always knew. And she couldn’t understand it. It was like she had a magnet that attracted abusers, that called out to them like body writing that said, “Rape this stupid fuck!” all over her face and chest. Was it something in her eyes? She’d heard guys talking about her before. They used the word “dead eyed” a lot. She didn’t grasp what that meant. Her eyes weren’t lazy, and she could see well. She didn’t need glasses. She just couldn’t grasp it.

Not that she grasped a lot, or easily. Not that she was exactly stupid either. She could sit down and eventually puzzle out or get the hang of most things, even if it took a while. She felt like she was all the time however. Even more than dead eyed, she was called stupid. As soon as they had cornered her, gave her something to drink, forced her down, or barged in on her, they always blamed her. It was her stupid fault. What did she expect to happen? She can’t really be that stupid could she, they’d say. Maybe she was.

She deserved it. That much she knew. She’d heard one variation or another on that all of her life. From her dad, to her mom’s bf, to her first boyfriend, to multiple strangers after. They all agreed she’d deserved it. As a “reward” or punishment, for the way she dressed, the way she acted, to the way she drank, she fucking deserved it.

Sometimes she just deserved to be held down and raped. Used, came in, and then discard. Sometimes she said something stupid and deserved to be punched, or slapped, or choked. Sometimes she deserved to be shoved around or robbed. But the truth was, somehow, she deserved it.

And she couldn’t figure it out. Some of the men told her it was because she was a woman. That was why she deserved it. But that wasn’t true. She believed it for a while, but she had seen first hand that a guy that could rape her could love and care tenderly for another woman. A woman that either had something she didn’t or lacked something that she did. She didn’t know what “that” was, however.

She’d seen firsthand a guy chat with 3 different women at a bar, a man that she didn’t know. He’d be nice, funny, joking and chatting with the other women, spending hours trying to coax them to dance, party, or go home with him. After failing, the man had eyed her and sighed. She didn’t know why, but somehow, he seemed disappointed that she was his last option. She was at least as pretty as them. It was the number one compliment men gave her. She was pretty. Sometimes even sexy. She’d been hearing how pretty she was since she was a little girl. So, it couldn’t have been looks.

And then, unlike with the other women, he didn’t ask. He told. He groped. He grabbed her wrist so hard it bruised and took her out back, and despite her saying no a dozen times, he slapped her so hard she tasted blood, then hiked up her skirt and took what he wanted. He called her a stupid bitch, dumped his load in her and kicked her in her ass to the rough concrete and told her to get the fuck out of here. She didn’t know, couldn’t understand why.