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I have a hard time not blaming myself for what happened next. I wish I didn’t. I wish this was not a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who wander off in the dark. Who are made to learn there are bad people everywhere. That the truth is these people are not strangers. They are the men who you sleep with, the men you work with, the men you raise. I wish this wasn’t what it means to be female—it is not a matter of if something bad will happen, but when.
He should have taught his daughters that you cannot save yourself from heartbreak. You cannot save yourself from grief.
Why do women do this? Why are they conditioned to give and give and give? She thinks about those seven cases out of one thousand. Maybe one day it will be eight, then nine, then ten. Small bites are all she’ll ever be able to take. And they will have to do. She’ll never be full.
“I always wanted girls. Just daughters.” She has said this before. Too many times to count. “They never leave you. Boys get old, have adventures, and then get married, and they’re not yours anymore. Girls do all that, too, but they always come home.”
How one choice cascades into the next, like dominoes falling.
