No Explanation Necessary: Trigger Alert

I think I was a junior in high school. I was asked by my neighbor to babysit her and her sister’s kids so they could go out. At some point, the sister’s boyfriend came to the house. He said he was coming to check on the kids. They were all asleep. He stayed. Wanted to talk. He was grown and huge, I was a kid and small. What did we have to talk about? Why was he there? Why wouldn’t he leave?

Eventually, he started telling me how pretty I was and that he was going to have sex with me. I had been through this before. I had been so pretty that I didn’t have a say in whether or not I was going to have sex. This time, I got up the strength to ask if he would wear a condom. He did. When he was done, I left and was so shaken and trying so hard to pull myself together that I didn’t realize I had left those children alone with a rapist. I was so afraid for them that I never really addressed what happened to me.

A few days later, I was confronted by the sister. I fucked her man. I was a little slut. I was all kinds of things. I listened through the yelling for clues if anything had happened to the children. From what I could tell, they hadn’t been harmed. I was happy about that. She wanted to fight me. Told me that if I wasn’t such a tiny kid, she would have beat my ass. I didn’t defend myself from her attack, I didn’t try to explain. I didn’t need to or want to. I didn’t care what she thought. I knew the truth. Sometimes, that’s all that matters. Sometimes, that will be all you have.