Never tell the girl with messy hair and wide eyes that when her father sexually abused her they were, "fooling around." Fooling around is a consensual act between two lovers, friends, or strangers in which both gain pleasure and to make her feel as though that is something she did is degrading and destructive. She's already been through that once.
When I got that anonymous question asking me "why is it when you fool around with your dad, no one gets in trouble, but when I do it I'm a ******?" I almost snapped. The smell of cheap beer formed under my nose and the entire contents of my stomach almost fell to the side of my bed, however, I had not eaten enough to push all of my mental instability out of my mouth. I could feel my father's hands around my wrist, pulling, pinning, calloused hands scratching my nine year old skin. I could hear my young cries for help, and the tears staining my cheeks. I could feel the air on my ear as he whispered. "Tell anyone and it'll be worse next time." I remembered cleaning my own blood from the carpet that afternoon.
And I almost replied with a defensive remark, but I stopped. There was no need for this private matter to be put on display on a social media forum, because then who's the girl that "fooled around" with her father?
But then the question, it irks me to my very core, the reason my hands are so swiftly typing this poem between waves of hurricanes in my eyes. It's as if my dignity has been stripped from me again, no more layer of scar tissue to protect even the deepest layers of my darkest secrets. Nothing was safe anymore.
And when I showed it to my boyfriend, the look in his eyes terrified me. It was as if someone had just dropped a match on a mile long pile of bone dry trees doused in gasoline. But someone had. Someone had dropped a match on me, just as fragile and capable of burning up completely.
Never tell the girl with messy hair and wide eyes that when her father sexually abused her they were, "fooling around." Fooling around is a consensual act between two lovers, friends, or strangers in which both gain pleasure and to make her feel as though that is something she did is degrading and destructive. She's already been through that once.