-----WARNING, EXPLICIT CONTENT, MAY BE TRIGGERING----

My stomach makes me feel disgusting.

I’ve always been short,
Had thick thighs that puberty blessed me
With,
And mostly even *******,
And then there are the stretch marks,
That have only bothered me a little bit
Because they were on the inside of my legs,
And not hard to hide.

When I was nine years old,
My older sister pasted makeup
Across my face
For fun,
I don’t remember the fun.
I remember when she told me my lips were too plump,
And said she could shrink them
With the wave
Of a magic
Red
Crayon.
And here I am.
Plump lips,
Round cheeks,
Small deep-set eyes.
A complexion marred by freckles
And tiny acne scars.

And I took that small portion of body shame
Through puberty
With me,
Wondered why the boys
Didn’t objectify me,
Because in our world,
In a woman’s world,
We’re breastfed from birth
To know that if we aren’t
Objectified
We aren’t
Pretty,
And if we aren’t pretty
We aren’t
Worth
Anything.

So the first boy who wanted my body
In the summer of my youth,
My half-baked adulthood,
Seemed like a Godsend.
And I followed him
Like God himself.
It took me over three years
To figure out
That kisses weren’t supposed to hurt.

I protected him
Like he was a child,
Forgave him like a final hope I had set all my dreams on,
Ignored his lies like a slave bows to a master’s blows.
And he knew
That everything I said no to,
All it required to make me give in
Was the threat of no longer
Wanting me.

He ignored me for only a week to touch me again.
And I let him.

He kept me
As a pocket lover,
One he could take out
And put away on a whim.
Made me comfortable enough with him
To be naked,
And naked enough to remember that I ate more than him.

And after months of pushing the line,
Doing little things
And then apologizing,
Or claiming he was just kidding.
He waited until I was primed,
I watched him think about it.
I saw the thought
In those cold blue eyes.
Saw them storm into the waters of blue,
And crash grey,
As he bit his lip and decided.

He held my wrists,
After lulling me into a sense of safety and playfulness
Whenever he did anything of the kind,
And then...

Most people don’t think of an abusive man performing oral *** as his first choice of attack.
I always thought they’d forcefully take
Instead of forcefully give.

But he ignored our safe word,
And kept my wrists pinned.
I was too stunned to fight harder than that.
I was too stunned.
Too confused.
Wasn’t this love?
He wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t love...
He fought through my protests
And I gave in.
He knew I would,
He was too sure of himself as he pushed through my argument.

I went home and cried that night.
I told him I didn’t want to do it again.
He reassured me he didn’t mind.
But after a few days of his cold shoulder,
I realized again,
Just how much I was willing to do
For his attention.

He always loved leaving little bruises on my skin,
Little places he’d kissed more aggressively.
At first,
As a teenager
Who barely knew anything about such things,
I didn’t mind at all,
I thought this was all so
Very
****.
And maybe it was in the beginning.

But then he got harsher.
I’d moan harder just so he would stop,
Because he wouldn’t listen when I said it hurt.
I’d look in the mirror at my purple and blue
Ty dyed skin,
And pull my clothes on
In a hurry
So I didn’t have to look at me.

As time went on it hurt more.

How can I explain what it was like
To have little things
Like that,
Things I used to enjoy,
Suddenly cause so much pain
I’d count the seconds until he stopped.

My conservative Christian upbringing
Made me feel disgusting and shameful
When I thought of talking about how
When he used to playfully slap my **** it was just fun and games,
And then suddenly he slapped me so hard he’d leave a throbbing red hand mark on my body.

It was a violent
Terrifying
Thirst for ***
And strength.

Screams of pleasure turned to screams of pain.

And in the moment where he had his **** in my mouth,
Moving in and out in a sick rhythm,
As I stared blankly at his pleasure,
I realized that was all I was anymore...
His pleasure.
I felt an emptiness I can’t explain.

The only thought in my mind,
Was “I’m just a toy.”
A toy he could break,
And then patch up
Just enough
To use again,
And break,
And place a piece of tape,
Over
And
Over
And
Over
Again.
And if I said no,
All he had to do was not answer a few texts for a couple weeks.

But that wasn’t the final straw.
That wasn’t the last of it.

“Let’s just stick it in and see how it feels.”
He’d said it at least eight times and told me
He was joking every time I said no.
That was the last piece of my dignity and boundaries
I had held onto.

The last time I saw him he said it again.
After he had “accidentally” partially penetrated five times.
What if he got bored of me saying no?
What if he got bored of me?
I played along with the idea for a moment,
And he pushed for a yes.
I was saved by my ride
Pulling into the driveway.

I went home and cried again.
Sobbed bitterly.

I wish I had kicked him off
Instead of humored him,
Even if it had only been considering it for a few minutes.

And bare in mind
I still thought
That I was the crazy one.
That he hadn’t done anything wrong.

That was the last few months of winter.
Come late summer,
I was dating the best friend he had always hated.
And that best friend’s kisses were soft.
Soft as a gentle bit of sunshine
Kissing my face through a canopy of green leaves.
And his touches waited for permission,
His hands waited for invitation,
His lips waited to be welcomed,
And his tenderness was there from the beginning.

In a moment of his sunshine beauty,
I had flashbacks,
And knew something
Had been very
Very
Wrong,
With the last boy.
Because this one was loving
Before he claimed he loved me,
This one would stop at the word “no”,
And kiss my forehead,
And hug me close,
And never made a sign
He minded.
He was safe.

And then I knew what the bruises meant.
What holding my wrists meant.
What ignoring me meant.

I thought the world would be fundamentally different,
But it kept going.
My brain was an orchestra
Of sirens,
And a kaleidoscope
Of red flags.
And yet
Everything outside of my body
Was still the same.
And my body became even more disgusting to me,
A monument
To the pain
He inflicted on me.

That’s why I’m only eating 1,560 calories a day,
That’s why my stomach makes me feel disgusting,
That’s why I accidentally gained
15 pounds,
Because I can’t look at myself.

And I don’t want the truest love I’ve ever known,
To see the same body he saw.
The same body I had to watch abused.

I can't stand to exist in this shape anymore,
yet here I am.
I'm sitting in dangerous anger
in my dispised skin.
I woke up today,
and I will wake up again tomorrow.
Eventually, my body will have new memories,
my fingers are slowly learning
the familiarity of a safe hand,
and my voice is learning
happy sounds.

But it takes time to relearn
how to keep living.