If You Tell a Lie

by Lucinda Berry

Seven seconds. That’s how long it took him to slip his fingers down my pants and change my life forever.

But she told me they were out there. She never told me they were at home.

You couldn’t stay stuck in trauma forever.

The fat friend in the group. Because that’s who I was back then. Every group of women friends has the one. Either the overweight friend or the ugly friend. Doesn’t matter. We served the same role—making the other girls feel better about themselves.

Like we’d be the best team and most supportive of each other. But that wasn’t what happened at all. We recreated the same social hierarchies at camp that plagued our high schools. It was the strangest thing, and it always happened.

And when you’ve always been at the bottom, sometimes the power of being at the top goes to your head.

I’d lived with suicidal hate for so long that the moment I tasted what it felt like to have an ounce of love for myself, I chased that shit like it was heroin. I’d never stopped.

Do you know how freeing it was to live in a world where you didn’t give a fuck what people thought about you? Especially as a woman? There’s no better feeling on the planet. At least I haven’t found one yet.

They want to talk about my mom dying like God needed her as an angel. Really? Like I’m pretty sure I needed a mom more.

That was the moment I split into two people—me, the talented and decorated gymnast, and me, the girl who was being raped by the coach helping her earn all the medals.

Maybe that’s what happened when evil men squirted themselves inside you. They ruined you forever.

“You think any of those people actually care about you? How many real friends do you have? When’s the last time you were in a relationship? Like a real relationship? You think you’re successful because you’ve figured out how to take your clothes off for the camera?”

You pretended it didn’t bother you, even though you wanted to die on the inside.

Sometimes there were wounds you just couldn’t heal from, even after they became scars.