Justification

I always had the sense that it had happened because I'd hit puberty.

I had breasts when I was seven. Small breasts, but breasts.

I already had little hips when I was eight. That was also when I had to start buying special things from the store.

Tampons. They were tampons. Be an adult.

I had the sense that because my body had already acclimated towards this thing, that was why they were hurting me.

I mean, that's not true. Most of the other girls were well before puberty.

I guess it made me a novelty? I don't even know. I can't even guess where their heads were.

I do know that it made the girl who introduced me to the bad man hate me more. She was angry that I was taller than her and that I already had what was the beginning of a woman's body. She was older than me.

It was a bad thing, to be a woman so young. It was a wrong thing, and she made me pay for it.

It took me a really long time to be okay with my body, with the fact that it's curved.

Dad stopped taking me to church-functions at that age, because older men had started making passes at me (without my knowledge or understanding), thinking that I was somewhere in the area of sixteen. I was nine. Dad made them leave me alone.

If he'd still been taking me to weekend church stuff, if he'd felt that it was safe to have me there without the fear that someone would use their hands on me, my mother never would've had the responsibility of taking care of me on weekends.

She never would've taken with me when she went to watch the children of her friend who had to work weekend night shifts.

The girl who she was watching never would've introduced me to those men.

That said, men were already making passes at me, and statistically, it would've happened another way.

I don't think that makes my father feel any better about it. I don't blame him though. My mother, I blame. She watched me with those men who my new friend was flirting with and she told me to my face that it was normal for little girls to start flirting with men around that age and that it was harmless.

She is such a stupid bitch. She brought me there, every weekend, practically gift-wrapped me for those disgusting pieces of shit. Unbelievable.

It's not my fault it happened. It's not the girl's fault it happened. It is the adults around us who were and are to blame. No matter what they all told me.