We were sat on the porch steps beneath the lamppost. School had been out for a few weeks, and I was finally sixteen...finally legal. I was naive. We'd spent the last summer in the balmy grip of sweaty, sensual first love. I assumed this summer would be the same. You didn't just walk away from someone you'd invested this much of your short life into, did you?

All the things we did...

I'd lost my virginity to him.

I'd lied for him, when we'd been caught and they'd sent me to court, bringing up charges of statutory rape against him.

I'd lied.

I lied like I never had before and never will again.

I was an actor at the time and at the threat of sounding like an egomaniac-- quite good for a 15 year old girl. I put on one hell of a show.

They believed me.

They believed me when I told them we'd just shared kisses and caresses, that we'd known each other for years--that when the officer had caught us in the back seat of a beat up Honda civic that night, it'd been the first time. It hadn't.

Six months earlier he'd actually raped me in the front seat of said Honda civic, though I didn't realize that was what had happened until a year later, as diluted in my fantasy as I'd been at 15.

I didn't tell the social workers that he'd started dating me when I was just fourteen...and he was eighteen. I didn't tell them about the scar on my lower back from the time I'd said No. No. no no no no. NO. I didn't tell them about the ways in which he'd abused the body of a barely-woman, using me like some tattered sex doll. I didn't tell them.

I didn't tell anyone.

I didn't know it was wrong.

All I knew was that my heart was breaking.

All I knew was that I loved him. I really did.

I'd given my treasure to swine.

He got up and left after uttering those terrible words: I NEVER did.

I went upstairs to my bed and contemplated suicide.

I didn't do it, obviously-- but that is another story entirely.

This story continued with a girl who spent the next year flinching away from any relationship whatsoever. I lost every friendship I'd ever had, the ones who'd been by my side since second grade... they slowly faded away as I spiraled into an empty husk of my former self.

The following year, grade 12-- I attempted to find my power. I preyed on the boys, exchanging saliva and desperation in alcoves and against lockers, then roughly shoving them away when things began to progress past kisses. I was horny and angsty and utterly terrified to have anyone lay hands on me, terrified to give up any semblance of control, terrified to love or be loved.

Against all odds, I met my husband in grade 12. The first time I saw him, he was dancing with another girl at homecoming. He was terribly tall and muscled, but inexplicably awkward. He looked very much like a teddy bear. He looked safe.

I locked eyes with him across the dance floor and I think somewhere, in that moment, the both of us knew that I'd make him mine. Six months later, I did.

He was safe.

He was also just as broken as I was.

We filled in the holes in each other's hearts. He kept me safe and I kept him safe.

He told me about every terrible thing that had ever happened to him.

I told him about every terrible thing that had ever happened to me...

Except...

"I never did."

I wanted to pretend that part hadn't happened. I wanted to pretend that I was too strong, too much of an over-comer to have ever been used so maliciously.

We got married.

We had babies.

We built careers and homes and a life beyond our greatest fantasy.

But some nights...

He'd reach out and I'd curl away.

Some nights...

I'd push him away.

He'd roll over with hurt feelings and I'd cry into my pillowcase.

Some nights...

I'd refuse to be touched at all. Not even comforted by him.

Some nights...

I'd flail and kick and murmur NO, until he shook me awake with questions in his eyes and sadness in his heart.

It took a decade for me to tell him.

His heart broke-- I saw it. His face crumpled in shame and he touched me gently on the cheek, tears in his eyes, crease in his brow. The pain written starkly in his gaze, "You never told me." He cupped my face in his large hands, "I didn't know. I didn't know. All this time...I thought it was about me... I didn't know. I am so sorry." He'd pulled me to his chest then, held me like a baby bird, and run calloused fingers along my back until I'd fallen asleep. Safe.

And I've been safe ever since. He is careful and so am I. We hold to each other, but do not crush... because as much as I'd like to say that the pain went away...

It never did.

It wasn't really the rape.

It wasn't the broken heart.

It wasn't the weird waste of the last year of my childhood.

It wasn't the friendships that broke irreparably in the aftermath.

It was the being used.

It was the lie.... Being told that I mattered when...

I never did.