I was thirteen years old when I fell in love with a boy. Except, he was not a boy… he was a man. He was eighteen years old, five years my senior. And what I felt was certainly not love… a crush, maybe, but at thirteen I couldn’t even begin to comprehend was love meant. He was everything I ever wanted in a boyfriend, so when he began to molest me behind my parents’ back, I didn’t understand that what was being done to me was wrong.

It wasn’t until he was pinning me down on my parent’s bed, crushing me beneath the weight of his body so he could shove his hand up my skirt, that I realized something might be wrong. He kept whispering “be still, I’m not going to hurt you. I’ll only go in a little bit”, and just like that, his hands fought their way up my thighs, tearing through my innocence in one fatal swoop. I fought hard against him, begging him to get off of me, but he laughed in my face. I was fifteen years old. He was twenty.

That day, I locked myself in my bathroom, unable to comprehend what had just happened to me. I vomited into the toilet as hot tears ran down my cheeks. I told myself that he loved me, and that what he did was normal… because that’s what boys and girls did right? I hated myself for crying, I thought that it was my fault for not wanting him, and that I was the one who wasn’t normal.

When I was seventeen, he raped me. To this day, I will never forget the look on his face when I told him no….and he told me yes. He thinks I don’t remember but I do. I was drunk, he forced so much alcohol on me, even pouring it down my throat at times. He carried me back to him room, threw me on his bed, and locked the door behind him. I trusted him so much, so when he began to enter me, I cried out…mainly out of disbelief. I had clearly told him no…maybe he just didn’t hear me? So I laid there…numbly, limply, and with each impaling, violent thrust, the life drained out of me more and more until I resembled a hollow shell, lonely and terrifyingly empty.

Now, at nineteen, I am strong. I will not remain a victim of what was done to me. This man, this coward, this monster of a man, might have stolen my innocence and my childhood from me, but I refuse to let him steal my future. I am thankful every single day that I walked away from him. And to anyone out there tonight who thinks they are trapped in an abusive cycle, please know that there is another way for you, and that you have more strength than you think, and most of all, you are not alone.