pr3ttyshad0ws

The first time

His hands are cold on my hot skin as they move across it, inching up and down as the foghorn of my parents warnings blasts between my ears and behind my closed eyelids. I can hear then telling me not to do this, to remember the rules they didn\'t follow when they were my age and keep myself untouched for a husband who I don\'t want to imagine for fear he\'ll be just like my mother\'s and grandmother\'s husbands. My parents voices scream for me to remember the words from a book ill never finish reading because it\'s too hard to be a sinner when I know what the sins are.

He asks if he can touch me and some part of me that isn\'t overwhelmed by breaking every moral I\'ve been taught says yes please! And he touches me and I forget that I don\'t want him to touch me

The ring on my finger that I accepted out of fear of judgement and shame is still there. But my purity ring isn\'t so pure anymore is it? I still wear it so i dont forget to put it back on because my mother and my father would notice.

He asks me to get on my back now, asks me to get on my knees, asks me to lay on my side. And I do. Because I have always and will always accept attention in any form I can get it, and if his attention is on pushing my face harder into the mattress then at least he\'s paying attention to me.

When I get so tired that I cannot hold myself up anymore I can hear his disappointment drip from his assurances, so I let him bury himself in a different part of me because I\'ve always been a people pleaser. And I swallow my guilt and try to get off my knees but I can\'t

My legs are weak, the gaping hole I have become makes me feel so dirty that I cover myself with sweaty blankets to hide my shame from him. He has to leave now, he\'s already late, so I stay in his room under the shelter of the comforter that is far from comforting.

The next week this becomes a daily occurance, and I hold back tears of physical and emotional pain as he moves on top of me. I count minutes in my head that last centuries and I will for him to finish and go because I don\'t want to be here anymore.

My mother calls me. I tell her I\'m seeing a boy because that is as much of the truth as I can push past my lips without feeling the shame of lying to her, and I can\'t take anymore shame this week.

He tells me he sees a future with me but his future could end tomorrow and another girl could become his new future just as easily as I did. He tells me he doesn\'t like labels, and that he doesn\'t want to call me his girlfriend, and that I can\'t use his picture as the background on my phone because I can see his face in person. But in person I can\'t look at his face because I have to close my eyes when he touches me.

How\'s that for a first time?