You Will Be Stronger

*This chapter has a TRIGGER-WARNING regarding sexual assault. This event is vital to the future of the story. I neither condone, nor victim shame, any trauma of this sort. As I, a man, went through sexual assault when I was a boy, then again as a teenager. However, through therapy, honesty, and revelations, I am stronger... passionate... and loving. Not all stories end with a happy ending. Prayer and thoughts fail to heal when the pain is too deep and caught in the vortex of shame. May this story help you rise up. Rise up. Take back what was stolen from you. Your noble spirit. Your dignity. Your self-worth. You will be stronger after the storm.

As a little girl, Olivia knew very little about her sexuality and even less about her gender. No one taught her. All she learned was how to act in social environments and around certain people. Her parents ensured she ate, dressed, and provided a home. Her behavior was largely focused on committed relationships after she became an adult. Anything other, she’d earn a demeaning label. She was in the dark for many norms.

She began to question why she had a thatch of hair between her legs, in her armpits, and was receiving more attention when she hit puberty. Her family was so leaning to conservative tradition and keeping her chaste and pure. They filled her head about her growing breasts and hair, which would be a distraction for men. It would be immoral if she was not modestly dressed. It was okay for a little makeup, but anything to call attention to her body in public would be a scarlet letter on display.

Olivia’s dark hair threatened other women with lighter colored hair. She felt as if she was born to be an objectified commodity valued by the world. She had to dampen any hint of her sexual permissiveness and desirability to avoid provoking her family or those in her social circles. She had to “dress defensively” by wearing less revealing outfits.

Her self-esteem was muted. It became her duty to worry about what other’s thoughts and behaviors were with regard to her as a female.

When she was thirteen years old, she went to a church sponsored pool party for young women. As she hung out with her friends, a youth leader came up to her and asked, “Do you have a shirt you could put on over that?” She was wearing a modest two-piece swimsuit. The problem was her curves, and cleavage showed more than a 1950s style. She sat there stunned, in a sense of shame and embarrassment.

It wasn’t fair. Are bodies of young girls inherently sexual, needing to be policed? Why was it up to me, a teenager at the time, to control how grown men saw me? Was my biology the reason males lusted and females indoctrinated to be competitive or worse? Maybe Aunts from the Handmaid’s Tale?

As she grew into her late teenage years, her body blossomed. Her body was curvier and voluptuous. Her boobs grew heavy and caused her back pain a lot. She was always with her mom or girls from her church group when shopping for sports bras to confine her chest. Binding herself as if she was an ancient Chinese girl forced into foot-biding.

For hundreds of years, millions of girls had their bodies painfully deformed to conform to a dominant social custom. Having a normal body would damage their marriage prospect, they were told. In France, women were arrested if they walked on certain streets at certain times. In the Victorian age, corsets damaged women’s lungs and rib cages to get an hourglass shape. In Japan, workplaces women must wear high heels. Despite the strain that high heels put on backs, knees, and foot bones and spinal slippage. Physical constraints imposed on Olivia and others in her social circle made it impossible to imagine life any other way.

She felt the gender division. She’s seen what happened to women pleading for a divorce from her mate, who beat her, assaulted her, or slept with others without her consent or approval. If a woman was sexually assaulted, the victim was the adulteress. Speaking of your opinion or having a “hot-mouth” was seen as a failed woman. All these ladies were labeled gender traitors.

When she turned sixteen, she was innocent and ignorant of the “how” and mental, and emotional parts of sex. Olivia was riddled with anxiety and didn’t know what to expect. She glanced at the boys, wondering what their anatomy looked like. How the romantic, naughty thoughts trickled into her head, but she quickly banished because of her upbringing. She had no clue of her hymen, her own anatomy. When she had her first menstruation, she hid it for three cycles until her father told her mother about her bloating and irritable moods. Then when her mother gave her a tampon, and with vague instructions, it was worse than Medieval medical care.

Later, as she turned seventeen, the only desire she knew was the desperate longing that the boy she liked might touch her hand as he walked by. On one of those chilly evenings, she secretly wished for smoldering looks she heard whispers about. Romantic, sweet intent to woo her and her affections. In her heart, Olivia knew she had a lot of love to give to the right person. To inspire and bring to his table more than her body, but her opinions, and eagerness to grow together.

Family, friends, teachers, politicians, judges, police officers, and media blame survivors for not doing enough to prevent their assaults. They must have been wearing something, saying something, or doing something that led to their rape, harassment, or groping. When the boy she crushed lured her into a back room of the church, Olivia still explored her identity and got comfortable with her body. He used the excuse of showing her the hidden parts the congregation didn’t see. Only ministers, teachers, and lay-folk went for their duties and wardrobe changes. In her mind, she fantasized of her and him kissing and what his hands would feel like on her body. It was thrilling, provocative, and discreet in her mind’s eye.

As she entered the room, she found herself surprised. There was one of her girlfriends and two other boys. She didn’t know what to say or do. She went to her girlfriend to ask questions, but the sting on her face made her freeze. Her crush had smacked her to silence her. As the terror, horror, and two hundred tears began to flow, her friend pulled out a camera none were supposed to have.

When she had homework assignments on the computer, her parents installed an Eagle Eyes program and a keystroke logger. Anything remotely affiliated with sex, anatomy, or relationships was blocked. She had no idea that pornographic stuff even existed, nor that betrayal was a concept. In her mind and upbringing, she had no words for this turn of events.

One boy came to her and looked into her eyes. For a moment, she saw empathy. Then in a blink it was gone. So were the four buttons on her shirt. He had ripped her blouse open and exposed her chest. Her brassiere was the only thing clothing her. Then her friend handed the phone to her crush as he filmed it all. She slithered behind Olivia. Her friend then unbuttoned her jeans from behind, opening the zipper, and with her fingers crawled into panties and over her mound.

She felt the cold digits crawling over her frozen thatch to the folds of her vagina.