“be careful” - everyone always told me while i was growing up.
“don’t walk alone at night”
“always keep pepper spray on you”
“when you’re walking alone,
pretend to listen to your music but don’t actually
listen to your music - you need to be aware of
your surroundings at all times”
“use your keys as a weapon if you need to”
“we don’t want any suspicious man to hurt you” -
they said.

you see, growing up i always thought there was something wrong with me.
all my friends would be talking about their latest guy crush and i just
really didn’t get it.

so at fifteen years old i was really excited to finally realize that i was gay
and that i was, in fact, not going to die alone like i had previously thought.

feeling comfortable enough to come out and explore my sexuality
in an environment that felt safe was such a big relief.

the thing is - no one really tells you to be careful around friends,
or around the people you’ve grown to trust the most.

no one tells you to be cautious when you’re laying on
your high school crushes bed making out instead of
watching the movie tarzan that’s playing in the background.

sure i was aware she had a quick temper and occasionally
threw the furniture around at school in fits of anger.
- but when she wasn’t angry she was always the first
to crack a joke and make me laugh, so everything’s ok, right?

no one told me that girls can **** too.

so when it happened later that night after tarzan was over,
in addition to the crippling disgust and paralyzing fear i felt,
i was really lost and confused.

because it happened,

but it didn’t happen in a dark alleyway like they had told me -
i was in her bed.

we weren’t drunk - like the men they had told me to be wary of,
we had just been watching tarzan earlier that night.

it wasn’t a man that did this - like they had warned me.

it was a girl.
a sixteen year old girl.
it was someone who i had grown to trust.

after, i spent the majority of my time dissociating.
i dissociated to the point where that night was completely
erased from my memory and replaced with a black hole in my mind.

it’s almost exactly like when you’re watching a movie and the
dvd is scratched up so it skips a couple of scenes forward and
you know something had to have happened because now the
main character of the movie is uncontrollably crying when just
two seconds ago she was smiling,
and now the story doesn’t make sense anymore.

you can’t go back and rewind it because
its a permanent scratch on the dvd.
a permanently damaged movie.

so yes, i always knew something happened that night.
because even though there was only blank space in my mind,
the self hatred, deeply rooted anger and questions about what happened
still remained and i couldn’t figure out why my heart
was hurting so badly all of a sudden.

i’ve been told by doctors that this is all a normal reaction to trauma.

so why do i still try to convince myself that it never
happened, when i know **** well it did?

and why did i keep quiet and carry something so heavy
for years after the memories started resurfacing, alone?

maybe it was fear.
i mean how could i expect others to believe me when
the majority of the time i didn’t believe it myself.

maybe it’s because it’s unbearably painful
when i do acknowledge it.
and it’s unbearably painful when i don’t.

i don’t really know.
i never wanted this to happen and i’m still trying to
find my way out of this ******* mess.

all i know is that no one ever told me that sometimes the
ones who hurt you the most are so often the ones you trust.

and i am so scared to trust again because man,
i was only a kid but i was forced to grow up overnight.