what they don’t tell you about the aftermath

that for days after, you will hurt in places you never knew existed. they always fail to describe the gnawing twinge in your gut. behind your ribcage. across the skin that does not feel like your own anymore: raw and crimson after being fed to razor blades. that you don’t confide in anyone. it was nothing, and you’re just being dramatic, like always. nobody will say that just because it has happened once, doesn’t mean it can’t happen again, and so you will go on believing that the first time, all those years ago, was the only one that counted. you will convince yourself that the tiniest piece of you must have wanted it, right? they do not tell you that even the longest, scalding showers cannot erase the contamination and confusion. that you can scrub until you bleed. you will still feel him.  

and the worst part: you will hate yourself so goddamn much for what all of those men have done to you. on your way to school one day, you will blow through a red light in the busiest intersection in town. it won’t matter if you live or die, but you will live, and the guilt will tear at every part of you like piranhas chewing flesh. you will live out the rest of your high school career sobbing and hunched over toilet seats in between classes. nights will mean extracting blades from razors like sweet honey from a bee. gillette: the best a man can get. the worst a woman can get, says the blood trailing down your thighs. don’t eat, starve just to feel your stomach become as hollow as your heart. you will smoke too much and drink a bottle a night, and you’ll wonder if you’ve turned into your mother. but none of this matters anymore.  

why even good sex sometimes makes you sad: because you still feel that seven-year-old – or maybe the nineteen-year-old – stretching against your skin every time. that discomfort that makes your teeth ache, the price tag that comes with pleasure and the ways in which you are still that little girl spending all of your chore money in one go. he may be gentle, or even respectful, but the ghosts of the others cast shadows on your bedroom walls. and sometimes you hope they will swallow you whole, so you never have to feel this way again because it is so hard to be a person, and even harder to feel human. you float above the bed and see your legs sprawled out like a baby robin who has taken flight far too early. it is then that you know who pushed you from the nest: you could identify him in a lineup. but, of course, it never gets to that point because you are still that girl who never spoke up because each time you did, nobody believed it. so you keep fucking and keep fucking and keep fucking trying to remember when you didn’t use your body as a weapon. maybe somewhere, salvation starts at seven.  

and then, you are almost twenty-one. you will sit across from a woman you wish was your mother, focused intently on petting the cat in front of you, because you do not want to focus on the truth instead. she will notice the tears pooling in your diamond irises and the question will finally slip out because she knows that you are fighting these wars inside yourself and she knows that a younger version of herself lives inside of you and she knows. because it has happened to her, too, and once your answer creeps off of your tongue and the tears cascade, she will hold you. nobody has held you before. you disintegrate into her embrace, and you hate yourself for wishing she was the one to raise you.

they do not tell you that the aftermath is a wound that stings far worse when touched than when first created. that it is one that never heals, and leaves a tender scar. you will not tell your father. the knowledge that it will break him, as it has fractured you, stops you. have the dreaded conversation with your new boyfriend, because sometimes, you cry after sex. you use your sexuality as a tool of destruction. you don’t know whether the gun is pointed at the men who have done this to you, or if you are staring straight into the barrel, yourself. they do not tell you it is not your fault, that dating someone isn’t consent enough, that adults do bad things, too, and that they should be held accountable. you will spend years shrinking inside yourself, away from what you can be, and who you are. they do not tell you any of this.

until, one day, somebody does.