As an adult woman can hunt for and find her own value. She can graduate herself into importance. But during the shaky span from childhood to woman hood, a girl needs help in determining her worth-and no one can anoint her like her mother.

“Young Children believe that Mother is the true source and has all the answers. If a mother dislikes her child, or thinks she’s not good enough, the child believes she’s unlikeable and inadequate. If someone does not challenge this distortion and show the child that she is worthy and precious, she will internalize these negative beliefs and eventually decides that she cannot be different.”

I’ve been thinking for a while, about how I’m doing in therapy and my progress. So I’ve have homework and everything and one of the things I’ve done was a billboard of positive things and things that I like that make me happy. I do have pictures of myself on the top of the billboard with encouraging words and I have post it’s on it with positive things about myself and my body. I also have a book of positive affirmations that I carry with me all the time that I created myself. That got me to thinking of why I even have to do either one of these things just to make myself feel better. I sat down and thought for a little bit about what caused all of this and how it started. I thought about how I felt about myself when I looked into the mirror how I felt about my body and my feelings towards me. After thinking and crying I realized that I don’t have self-esteem or confidence.

I don’t know what confidence feels like. I don’t know how to think about my body but the only thing I do think about is having thunder thighs and my mother always getting on me about becoming a roly-poly and losing my baby weight. I felt the same thing about my hair and my complexion. Shed called me nappy hair because I have kinky hair so she put a perm in my hair when I was 12. After I had the perm in my hair for a while, it started to break off my hair and I started wearing hair weaves because I wanted long hair. All the boys and men around her like black women with long hair so that’s what I wore. I had curly weaves, crinkly, curly, multi colored weaves, I’ve even wore a wig before. I was ashamed of my hair. I was ashamed of the length when she made me take my senior pictures with my own hair. I hated the length I felt ugly. I hated that I had to put a perm in my hair to make it straight and that I had to put hair weave in it to make it longer and I still didn’t feel pretty. The only thing I kept thinking of was I was ugly. There were days when I had the weave in she would comment about how bad my hair looked, her and my dad would always say why you keep that crap in your hair. I was a teenager at the time and I remember thinking because I’m ugly. I’m not pretty and no one is telling me I’m pretty and no one is giving me that attention that I need. It got to the point my mother wanted a weave in her hair and she went out and brought the same weave I was wearing but in a different color. The thing that I had to myself I no longer had. I went natural in 07 and every comment out her mouth was when are you going to do something with that nappy head of yours. She tore down every positive thing about my hair that I had and I didn’t have the confidence to even get it back until now. I have dreadlocks and I wouldn’t change it for the word. It’s me, I love the way it makes me look, I love my hair, even the kinky part of my hair I love. I would never put another perm in my hair again.

I don’t have self-confidence; I didn’t have it when I was growing up. I wasn’t given those resources and when my mother did give them to me it was only a little bit at a time but she would come back and break me down again. My weight is something that I’m still a little bit insecure about. I’m still a little insecure about the way my body looks. Over and over it was drilled into my head that I have thunder thighs and a big stomach. When I was little, as soon as I hit puberty in the 5th grade I put on weight in my thighs, hips and my breasts. I’m short so of course it went to those places. I’m not fat, just thick and I love it now and I understand it now but then I thought I was fat. I never weighed over 150lbs in school but when I was in middle school my mother put me on a diet to make me lose weight. Then I was 85lbs in the 8th grade. I could run a mile in 8 minutes but she still thought I was fat and made me very aware of it.

She would tell me how I needed to lose weight because I was getting big. She would tell me that if I didn’t lose the weight I would look like a roly-poly, those toys that waddle but they don’t fall down because their bottoms are big. Then I would have to ride the exercise bike for an hour crying. She made me run up and down the steps for 30 minutes while she sat up stairs watching TV and eating. This one time she made me get on the exercise bike and when my sister came in the room to try to cheer me up she yelled at her to get out of the room. In elementary school I used to eat everything like all the time. She put me on a diet then and limited my portion size so after everyone else went to sleep I would sneak out the bed room and eat because I was still hungry. She preached and preached about control my portion sizes and how I’m eating too much. I have such big anxieties about eating now. Like I only eat once a day because I don’t want to get fat, I don’t want to gain any more weight. I still feel like I’m 10 being told I’m fat and I need to lose weight, that voice is still in my head and I’m fighting every day to try and get it out.

When I was pregnant with my daughter I only gained about 30lbs and that was just in my stomach. A couple of months later my mother asked me when I was going to lose the rest of my baby weight. (my mother is twice my size, she smokes, does drugs and works 3 hours a day, when she gets home she sits in the kitchen, in front of the TV and eat until it’s time for her to go to bed. She still has her baby weight). When I started to lose the weight and started wearing tight jeans shed always have something to say about why I’m wearing tight low cut jeans. My shirt was long enough so you didn’t see anything even when I sat down. I ignored her. So you don’t want me to be fat but you don’t want me looking nice either? In all of my school pictures I was not allowed to wear skirts or dresses. Especially in elementary school. She would put me in old jeans, boots and a sweater when every other girl in the class had on a dress for picture day. So when I would come home and tell her they were teasing me she didn’t care, her response was tell them if you don’t like my clothes go buy me some. That was her answer to everything, feelings didn’t and still don’t matter. We had dresses and nice clothes in our closet but she wouldn’t let us wear them, she would make us wear things she wore as a child.



 I wore make up in high school my freshman year. She hated it, I liked the glitter and the eye shadow and doing my eye brows but she hated it. She hated everything about it because she didn’t wear it growing up. She told me in front of my friends and her coworkers that I looked like a clown with all that junk on my face. I remember walking away holding back the tears because I was still around my friends and I didn’t want them to see me cry. I thought I looked pretty but to her I felt like I looked ugly. I was always insecure about my completion. To this day I still think I’d rather be a dark complexion than the caramel complexion I have now.

I feel like I’m not light enough to be pretty and I’m not dark enough to be pretty either. I feel like I’m in the middle and I feel lost. I got tired of hearing her talk about how light my complexion was, how I didn’t look like anyone else on her side of the family and how I was the odd one out at every one of her family events. Her brothers would make fun of me because I was so light and because I “talked like a white girl” (proper English). She never stopped them she would join in and comment about how she told me to lose weight, how I would be prettier if I lost the weight. And that’s what keeps playing in my head. Where I live, men like light skinned women (red bones) or you have to be loud and ghetto. And I’m not close to either one. I’m still unsure of myself when it comes to my husband. I don’t think he thinks I’m pretty enough because I know he likes light skinned girls with red hair and I’m not that. And I guess it just makes me think of how I wasn’t good enough growing up because of the complexion of my skin and because my hair wasn’t long enough or curly enough or even straight enough. This one girl in my neighborhood would make fun of my complexion all the time all the way up until high school. My first boyfriend broke up with me to be with her because I was too dark skinned and that hurt it still there in my heart.


Growing up I wasn’t called pretty, I wasn’t called beautiful, my mother never told me any of this; my father never told me any of this. The closest thing I was told was that I looked nicer in my clothes after losing all my weight. That’s not a compliment, that’s an insult. I wanted to feel pretty, I wanted to feel beautiful, and no one told me any of those things so I went looking for them. The boys my age didn’t find me pretty either so I went to older men and that’s when I met my ex, which was the worst thing that happened to me in my life. A lot of things I didn’t have growing up that I should have had but I never got. And I dint think that it would affect me as an adult but it does. I don’t have as much confidence in myself as I should. I don’t believe in myself as much as I should and I’m trying to learn it for the first time. I do feel empty, I feel broken, and I feel like not myself. How can I be confident when I don’t know what it is? How can I be sure of myself when I don’t even know who I am? I know what I like, I know what I don’t like, I know who I love and I know who loves me but I don’t know me. I don’t know myself. I feel like I’ve been beaten so many times that I’m struggling trying to get up again. I feel pretty now, I just don’t feel whole. While I’m going through therapy I feel my inner child talking to me and I talk back to her. And I can feel her crying and it’s so loud and that pain I had from being a child is starting to come out.


 Right now I’m scared of changing but I’m excited at the same time. It’s so scary for me because I haven’t felt like this before. I wasn’t allowed to think for myself and now that I had the freedom to say what I want and how I want it I guess I’m careful on how I do it. For so long I’ve carried this around with me because I was taking the blame for when my parents failed, especially my mother. She was the one who was supposed to be there and guide me growing up and she didn’t. That’s not my fault. I was under 18 and a child, I’m not responsible for her actions and I never will be. I’m responsible for what I do after I turned 18 and what I chose to do now. I used to think that because my mother had a bad childhood that was she did to me was excusable and that she didn’t know any better but she does. I see now that she knew exactly what she was doing, that it wasn’t an accident or something that she can blame her childhood on. That was her conscience decision and I’m not taking the fall for it anymore.

I'm 26 Years Old and I'm Learning About Sex Again.......

Just now I had this burning sensation through my body, I felt like I was losing control over everything. I’m scared to talk about the rapes with people who don’t know the details or don’t know me as well as my closer friends. I’m scared that if I open up and talk to people about it I will get hurt. I’m scared that it will come back in my face like I’m use to it doing. I have this big fear that once other people know that I’ve been raped that they will look at me differently.

 I feel damaged sexually. Everything else I can get through but my sexuality before the rape I can’t get back. I will never have something to compare sex to. So much has happened to me before me and my ex-husband met that it really fucked me up mentally. And I was thinking about that last night. How sexually I’m not normal, I never will be. The fact that I can’t just have sex when I want to upsets me.

How something so intimate, so personal, so private can be taken away from you and there’s nothing you can do to get that sense of security back completely. I just learned that I have been dissociating during sex. My body would leave its self and hover over and watch what was happening. I remember doing it when I was raped. I just didn’t realize that I was doing it when I was with my ex- husband. 

Let’s face the facts, I know that if I had an identical twin and we didn’t everything the same and it’s time for us to go out to date and she hasn’t been raped but I have, I know that she would be picked over me.

I’m not stupid or Naïve, no man wants to be with a woman he can’t touch or be intimate with. That’s a fact and that’s my baggage, that’s me. Considering I didn’t have a choice in the situation of having sex I still feel like it’s my fault
I’m learning about sex all over again for the second time. I’m learning what touches I like and don’t like. What feels good and what doesn't, I’m learning the emotional part for the first time ever because I never had a chance to share it the first time around. It’s scary. I know that sex and emotions go hand and hand which is probably why now I feel so emotional after sex when before I just felt so nonchalant about it. The feelings, the emotions, the looks, stares and connection is what I feel when it comes to sex now and even that is a scary and new thing for me.

It’s those days when you want to just hide Forever It’s a constant cold It’s covering your head with shame It’s living as a statistic It’s was drives you To residing to an easy escape It’s when living turns to surviving It’s rape.

I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately.
For the past week I’ve been feeling like total crap, I don’t know if it’s because of therapy and how much has come out or if it’s my emotions. But I’ve been feeling super down, emotional and vulnerable lately.

I’ve been talking so much about my feelings and my thoughts to my husband and friends and it’s just so exhausting. I’ve been feeling a lot of hurt lately. Last night it hit me that the men, who hurt me, actually hurt me. This whole time I’ve been dealing with every feeling that I’ve had except fort feeling hurt. I’ve been feeling angry, upset, pissed off, irritated and wanting them to die.

I’ve never felt the feeling of hurt before until last night. At 4am I went into my bathroom, sat on the toilet, with the cold breeze blowing through the window and I cried. I cried because I hurt for the first time over this. I sat on that toilet last night and rocked back and forth and I cried.

I cried so hard that I could breath and I had to clear everything just to start crying again. I repeated over and over and over again they hurt me, I can’t believe they hurt me, why would they hurt me. And I sat there drowning in so much hurt that I couldn’t sit still anymore. I had to get up and I took all that left over hurt to bed with me that night…..

I still haven’t figured out how to stop blaming myself for what happened. It’s not as bad as it use to be but I still think about it... I’ve made some bad choices but that doesn’t make it right. No matter what I did, it wasn’t my fault. No matter what I had on, it still wasn’t my fault. It doesn’t matter if I knew him before we went out, or where we went, it still wasn’t my fault, After so many years of blaming myself, it’s your fault and yours alone. May god have mercy on your soul.

Dream Merchant

I am the dream merchant. Sexually open for the world to see. I take much satisfaction in pleasing you however you my like.

Giving you what you want, I get nothing from it but your money. I don’t care if it feels good.....don’t give a fuck if I cum or not. It doesn’t matter to me; I just want your money.

I let my past get the best of me. I let it consume my mind body and soul. And that’s where I fucked up at. So I’ll make you pay for it. No time for intimacy, love or even a decent conversation. You mean nothing to me; I’m good at lying to get what I want from you. And that’s cash. But looking at me, you’ll never know it.

I will make you pay for what they took from me, by any means necessary. I fuckin can’t stand your nasty ass. The way you look, the way you smell everything about you I have.

That past four years I want........no I will make you feel the same pain I did just because I can.
Be careful what you ask for, I might look like eye candy but I will make your life a living fuckin hell...
©Golden Rays




I’m watching Bill Cunningham show and they are talking to this one female who is prostituting herself for money. She’s almost 30 and she does things for money. Well her friends are one the show to tell her how she needs to change for her daughter and how she’s destroying her life and how she doesn’t care about her child. So the one who was prostituting was like my daughter is taken care of, she’s not here, I can’t see her so who cares. We’ll all three of them are yelling at each other to the point of being loud and annoying. So then she finally came out and said what was going on with her.

She told her friends how she was tired of being raped and abused, how she was abused by her family since she was a child, how her ex-boyfriend had been abusive to her. The men she was with was abusing her. She told her friends that she prostitutes because it’s the only way she deals with the pain that she doesn’t care because she’s tired of feeling lonely and used.

Her friends response was who cares yours still a whole, you’re still selling yourself and their whole conversation ended up being both her friends calling her a weak ass bitch.

I have a lot to say about this whole topic. I understand completely what that woman is going through, I’ve been there before. I’ve hit rock bottom and almost lost my family. A lot of people do not understand the wounds of child abuse/rape and how deep they go. They don’t understand that something that happened to you when you were 5 can affect you until the day you die. It’s a wound that you can’t see and because it happens a while ago from the time we actually come out and speak about it, people automatically assume that we should be over it by now. That we have no reason to complain, that we weren’t killed so that makes it ok. They down play the whole situation and the victims feelings.

We don’t choose to carry around these feelings with us every day. If only you knew how hard it is to get up in the morning and move because it feels like your vagina is being ripped apart because the body memories you’re having from the rape you experienced as a child. Or walking around every day trying to eat because your gag reflex is so bad that it’s hard for you to swallow food because of the oral sex you were forced to perform. They don’t know about the nightmares, the flashbacks, and the anxiety that comes along with it. They don’t understand the shame we feel because it does affect our families. The blame we have when we do into a new relationship and our partners can’t touch us. It all comes along with it.

On the other hand I also understand why she started prostituting. They say that a lot of prostitutes were abused as children which make them more susceptible to being prostitutes, using drugs, being in relationships with abusive partners.



“For many women, prostitution and sexual exploitation might be the only life they know. The average age for girls entering prostitution is between 12-13. ** And studies show that 75 to 95% of all prostitutes were sexually abused as children. ***
http://www.womenslaw.org/simple.php?sitemap_id=148”

I understand how she’s feeling because after I was attacked when I was living on my own I freakd out. At the time I had so much stuff going on with me. I had just started to having bad flash backs again and one night I went out with a girlfriend, I wasn’t drinking I wasn’t smoking anything I was just me and her and I was raped. I don’t remember anything because I had been slipped the date rape drug. My ex- husband (he was my boyfriend) found me on our front door leaned up against it damn near unconscious with a bottle in my hand. I don’t drink cheap alcohol but that’s what was in the bag. I had remembered some parts of it, I don’t remember his face just certain things. Shortly after that rape I was robbed and a friends boyfriend tried to assault me. Frank had started coming around and threatening me because of my ex best friend.

Within that short period of time (a 6 month period) I had been raped, robbed and assaulted and harassed by Frank who was the first man to rape me. I was dealing with the flashbacks from being molested, the body memories from Banky and I had no one to talk to. Me and my ex had broken up because I couldn’t deal with my flashbacks, he told me I had too many issues and I needed help. I didn’t have anyone to go to. I didn’t have support from my family. They blamed me for the rape, my friends at the time thought it was all a joke and I had lost my best friend because I couldn’t deal with the feelings from being abused.
I had actually thought about stripping. But I quickly changed my mind. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to degrade myself, it wasn’t because I thought about my morals it was I thought I was too fat and too ugly to be a stripper, that no man would pay me to take off my clothes and dance for them. So I had seriously considered being a prostitute. It wasn’t even for the money for me. I had felt like if men are going to take it from me why not make them pay for it. What am I getting out of it but being hurt? If they are going to hurt me I could at least get something out of it. I was so use to being used that it was the only thing I knew and felt. I didn’t have friends to talk to, my family wasn’t supportive emotionally, I thought my ex hated me because he was always gone and I was left there by myself all day every day I just didn’t care anymore. As much as I thought about it and as much as I planned in my mind what I was going to do. I never did it. I was never bold enough to do any of it.

The thing about sexual abuse is that it has emotional tolls that damage you more than the actual physical abuse does. If one of my friends called me a weak ass bitch it would probably be the end all of everything. I don’t consider myself weak but I have felt weak before and it’s the most hurtful thing ever to say to a victim (besides blaming them or saying they asked for it). It’s something inside you that hurts so bad that you can’t explain it to other people. It’s a piece of you that gets broken apart and now you have to spend the rest of your life trying to put it back together again. No one understands it unless it’s happened to you before. The outside world just doesn’t get it.

What hurts us more is hanging on to being used to getting abused. After a while after the attacks and emotions we often fall into that victim mode. Where we couldn’t get the help we needed at the time and being a victim is all we know. So sometimes it’s the life that we live every day. It’s so dangerous because when you live the life of a victim it does sendoff vibes to predators. It’s like they pick up on these senses, that’s what they’re good at. It makes us more susceptible to more attacks and assaults. This is not our fault but we can change it with the help of other survivors and advocates.

People may think that we are using what happened to us as an excuse but we aren’t. We don’t want to feel this way, we are just telling you what happened and how we feel about it. We do understand our actions just like you do. We know that we can get through this but telling us to get over it is not one of the ways, especially when we finally do decide to reach out for help.

I know what you're going through, your heartaches are visible, your tears are still real, and your world has still been left cold. You want to cry, but deep down inside you try, to hold it all together. You wish you could just reach out, and hug your loved on once more, but realize it is all a dream. You want to shout

In a corner she sits,

head held between her knees,

her wounds are invisible

to the naked eye,

they are deep,

so deep,

her mind is poisoned,

her actions affected....

As her mind opens up

in the palm of her hand,

the mask she wears slips

from the tears falling,

tears flowing freely

between the memories,

the disappointments,

the tragedy, the love

she feels no more.

Crimson words pour

freely, and stain the

walls and floor, as she

sits untouched....

Today has been such an emotional day for me I don’t even know where to begin. Well for the past two days I’ve just been feeling down. Not depressed or anything but just feeling down and sad. Well one of those things that were bothering me was my dad, I miss him so much. We took him off of life support almost 3 weeks ago but he hasn’t let go yet. He’s breathing on his own but he still has no brain function so it’s not like he’s going to wake up and come back. He’s gone but just lingering around and that has been a little tough for me to deal with. Another thing is just stress with what’s going on at home but some of that has been fixed today so I can let that go.

You cannot imagine how this makes a black woman feel, Ugly, rejected, unwanted, unreal. To make matters worse, when we date other races, we never know whether it's love or displacement. Does he really love and respect the person I am? Or is he curious about sex with the opposite end? Is he doing this because he heard some rumor or tale? Or doing it to make a family member's face turn pale? In slavery times we were used and rejected So does he think that that's what’s' expected? And when times get tough then what will he do? Stick it out for me or find someone new? More times than not this ends up the case And here we are again with rejection to face.

LMFAO this is what really cracks me up. So this black judge Karen mills somebody just basically told the first girl on this show, I respect you, women have been selling their bodies for ages at least you’re getting a car and a house out of it. And then she said I’d rather see her married to a rich man taking his money because at least she’s not on welfare.

Jesus black women now I understand why everyone else treats us like shit. We don’t have respect for ourselves. We sure as hell don’t have respect for any other woman either. We down talk each other; give out dirty looks at a woman who is prettier than us. We roll our eyes, shake our necks and flirt with their men and yet we wonder why we are treated this way……

When we say things like what Judge Mills said (especially on national TV) we are showing everyone else out there that we are nothing. That we have resorted to selling our bodies instead of getting a job. And then we are bold enough to brag about it out in public, on the internet and especially on the News. We are boasting and bragging about being gold diggers and using men just for their money.

Women, Black Women………..where have our morals gone? What values do you hold in yourself? What are your boundaries? Do you even have any?

There are so many questions we should be asking ourselves but we don’t, just so superficial, immature and ignorant we are. We are worse than men. We are the best when it comes to victim blaming. Hell we blame our own daughters when they are molested by our boyfriends, husbands, brothers……..

What does that say about us?

Her bath washed away the semen but it didn’t wash away the memories of when he forced her to get on her knees and suck his – so I cried as if I was his daughter because of that rage and that possible AIDS between my legs, it could never add up to her pain, her distortion as he licked my body up and down. I hope that he would ejaculate enough that in his own semen he would drown. He carved his name in my uterus so that my first born child could on be as cursed as….Inaudible…. Thinking that this only happened in movies, she was the main character in the (inaudible) when she cried and he opened her credits. Too scared of the night, that is why she wished for ongoing sunlight.

I had met Frank before my junior year. We had been talking for that whole year and felt like it was the best thing that happened to me. I never had a lot of boyfriends but I did have a lot of friends. Hell, I didn’t have my first kiss until I was a freshman in High School. So I thought it was pretty cool that I had a man who actually liked me.

When I finally told my parents about him I was 17, they didn’t have a problem with his age but more so of his race. Their exact words were we don’t want you dating him because he’s not black. Because Hispanic men beat their women. I remember thinking and telling them that it was the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life and walking away from them. I knew that race had no part to play when it comes to abuse. So I was determined to see him.

That’s when I started to sneak out the house just to see him. We would go to the movies, the mall out to dinner all the time. At the time he had lived in Silver Spring so some days wed just go back to his apartment and watch movies. I was a virgin and was saving myself for marriage. So the only thing we did was kiss.



It was a Saturday I’d lost my virginity. My best friend and I had plans on going to the mall. Which we did do. My parents found out I was seeing him and made me stop so she would help me see him. I had curly tracks in my hair. My toes matched my nails. I had on a short black mini skirt with slits on the side. A yellow off the shoulders top that I had to wear a strapless bra with. My yellow old navy flip flops matched my head band.

We went to bath and body works. I remember buying warm vanilla sugar body spray and lotion. Frank met us in front of sears and we went back to his house. I was supposed to be back at the mall by 5:00 so she could take me home.

So we got into his car, he always drove a stick. I hate stick shifts because of him; he would drive like a crazy person and hit the brakes at the last minute. I swear I thought I would have a heart attack when he would drive.

It was maybe an hour drive and I kept looking down at my legs and it felt like my stomach had hit the floor. Frank holds my hand the whole drive up there. We have hung out at his house so many times before and for some reason this day I felt really uneasy about it.

So we get to his house and were just watching TV. It was Saturday so they were playing scary movies and action movies. We talked a little bit but was more focused on the movie. Frank was lying behind me and he’s holding me and running his fingertips up and down my legs and he kissed me. I kiss him back he climbs on top of me and we started kissing harder and I tell him I don’t want to have sex and that I’m scared. I was a virgin and the furthest I had gone with anyone was kissing (especially with a man). At this time my heart is beating out of my chest and he says ok and kisses me again. I keep kissing him back and he starts putting his fingers inside me. It hurts really bad and I start to push him off of me and in that second he just gets really mean.

Frank rips my underwear off and has his penis up to my mouth and makes give him oral sex. I started gagging and he presses the knife harder to my face and tells me if I bite him he was going to cut me. I tried so hard not to throw up but I couldn’t do it anymore. I can feel the knife cutting my cheek and his finished. I didn’t move, my body went numb and I feel him flip me over and his penis is near my butt and I laid there. I couldn’t see anything all I felt was a sharp pain and the tearing I felt. I screamed into the pillow but he didn’t care. He’s pushing my head into the pillow and I felt him ejaculate inside me.

I open my eyes and stare at the wall thinking that it’s over. I just wanted to go home and go to sleep. I turn over and all I see is blood on the sheets and he’s standing up putting on a condom. I can still see the knife and didn’t move. Frank raped me he raped me for an hour and I saw that tattoo on his back I stared at it the whole time. He keeps telling me stop moving, he asks me if I like it, how it feels. He leaned in to kiss me and I didn’t kiss him back. He’s finished and pulls out and tells me the condom came off.

That’s when reality hits me and I start to freak out because I didn’t want to get pregnant. I went to the bathroom and pulled it out. I sat on the toilet and cried. My hair was matted down and tangled, my face had a cut on it, my makeup was smeared and I could smell him coming off my skin. The dried up blood and semen wouldn’t come off with a paper towel. I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know what to do, I was embarrassed and scared.

I came out the bathroom and he’s standing near the window smoking as if nothing happened. I tell him I’m ready to go home. Frank tried to hold my hand on the way home. I was shaking the whole time and he looks at me and asks me what’s wrong? Why was I shaking like that?

I had to call my best friend and convince her to pick me up at a restaurant because Frank couldn’t take me home. My parents had forbid Frank to coming to my house. She came and picked me up and asked what happened to me and I said nothing we just fooled around. She asked me if we had sex and I said no.

I got home at 7:30pm that night. I could barely walk up the steps. I went into my bed room, pealed my clothes off of me, threw everything in the trash and put on stripped pj's from old navy. I sat outside for an hour, went back in the house and lay in bed. I didn’t do anything that weekend. When I had to go back to school Monday, walking was painful and sitting down was worse.

I covered up my scar with foundation and I kept wearing foundation to cover it up until last month. That scar is still on my face. I had to take my senior pictures with that and my mom wouldn’t let me put the foundation on that day.

My period was late 3 weeks later. I was scared and freaked out and end up telling my mom that I was raped, but I told her that I didn’t know who did it and that I might be pregnant. They still blamed me for walking out the house in a skirt but at least I didn’t get pregnant the first time.

I cried while thinking this isn’t the way I envisioned my first time but when I saw the blood pore from my legs, I thought if it wasn’t me the tears another girl would shed. I looked him in his eyes and realized that he was old enough to be someone’s father, so I cried as if I was his daughter, as I felt my insides being slaughtered.

I had a flash back that I’ve never ever had before.
 I was just lying there in bed in my bra and panties and I was starting to fall off to sleep until my mind just flashed back. I was lying in bed with Frank in just a bra and underwear on his bed with him beside me. I was seeing that I was having the flash back so I started using my breathing techniques and it worked for a little bit until the flash back started up again and I saw Franks hand reach up to stroke my back. I came back to reality for a quick second and the only thing I could remember saying to myself self was oh God don’t let him touch me that way. He did and my mind froze.
I talked myself down and I let the flash back happen. I felt like I saw myself over the bed while it was happening but I wasn’t freaking out or panicking.

After he raped me the first time. I was scared that he would hurt me again so I stayed with him for another 2 years. I saw myself in his room. I had on black sweat pants, a white nautica shirt, a white bra and white reeboks. He told me to take my clothes off and I did. I laid down on the bed while he climbed on top and was kissing my neck and my breasts and tried to kiss me on my lips but I’d never kiss him back. He didn’t say much but asking me if I liked it. I stared off into space. I would look at the TV if it was on, hoping it would make the time go by faster.

It never did. When he was done, he climbed off of me and has a cigarette. I would just roll over onto my side and lay there. It was such a sickening feeling. I knew it was wrong but the fear was so much greater than anything else. God it seems like it was forever until he took me home. He just wanted me around just in case he wanted another go around.

I let him rape me. I laid there every single time and let this monster rape me for 2 years. And now 10 years later it’s all coming out? Suck a fair trade…….

The tears pool into her eyes, Not knowing next what may materialize. As they cascade down her thin and pale cheeks, She gazes in the mirror at herself wondering exactly where she has been these last few weeks..? Is the damage done and unrepairable?

    Jul. 28th, 2004 at 7:06 PM

In a so called world of justice that we live in, all of a sudden the word no is not enough. It’s pointless and doesn’t mean shit to the man on top of you talking away your dignity or the police who are investigating the crime. According to the police in Prince Georges County, for me to charge him with rape, I would have had to resist him more. Which I didn’t, in other words, he would have had to beat my ass to get charged. What the fuck?

I was raped Monday night. Right now I just feel sick to my stomach. I could have prevented it, that’s why I feel so sick. I should have looked at what was going on around me at the time but I didn’t, I was too drunk to realize any of this. His name is Banky. We were supposed to be going to green belt mall which is in Pg. County but first he told me we had to go to his house so he could change he told me he had a lot of people over so I didn’t feel like anything was going to happen. I was on the couch and we were just watching TV. With his roommates sister and her friend. That went on for an hour. He takes my hand and he leads me to his room. We just lay on the bed and looked at pictures of him and his friends. He was laying on the bed and I was sitting up. He went and talked to one of his friends. He came back in the room and kissed me on my neck then he asked me if I wanted to go to the store with him to get the Hypnotic and I told him yeah. So we went and go the drink and came back to his room. He told me I wouldn’t get drunk off of it. I sat on the bed and two of his friends came in the room with us. I don’t remember his roommates name but his friends name was Z.

 Banky set on the bed beside me, z sat on the other side of Banky and his roommate sat in the chair with a mirror in it that was right across from the air conditioner. His roommate asked if I mind, he had weed in his hand, and I told him no. Banky poured the hypnotic in a blue plastic cup and I drank it. It didn’t taste like anything but kool aid. So I told him I was going to finish it, since there wasn’t that much in the bottle anyway and I wasn’t feeling drunk or anything.(i had been drinking jack and hard liquor months before the hypnotic so i knew it wasnt going to get me drunk) He and his friends were talking passing the blunt around and Banky had some. After they were done he started kissing me and I kissed him back. He was on top of me touching me and kissing me everywhere and I let him do it to me. He performed oral sex on me and I let him do that too because I wanted it. he picked me up by my hands and pulled me up and took off my pants, I held on to his shoulders and that’s when I told him that I didn’t want to have sex with him. I laided back on the bed and I was on my side facing him. He was kissing me, the next thing I saw was he held a condom up but it didn’t register in my head what was happening. He climbed back on top of me and I could feel his penis against my leg, that’s when I tried to move but I was too weak to do so. I kept saying I don’t want to have sex but it was like he was zoned out. He put it inside of me and I had started screaming yelling no but he didn’t stop, this went on for 15 minutes. He got off of me when I started crying. he said, “Tarina, why are you doing this?" he got off of me and I put my clothes on, while he put his on I sat against the wall and cried I want to go home, that’s all I could say. We walked out of his bed room where his roommate’s sister was sitting on the couch watching TV. We sat in the dining room where we had a conversation that was written on a napkin. I felt so sick about what had just happened and about how sick I was feeling about the drink.

 I layed on the bed and cried, all I said is I want to go home. I don’t remember the second time that well, I remember him taking my pants and panties off and I didn’t do that much resisting because it was going to happen anyways. I just screamed that’s it, hoping he would stop and about after 10 minutes he did. We had to wait for his roommate to come back with the car, he took me home. I got home around 2:00 in the morning. The first person I called was Will. He called the police and everything for me. I didn’t change, shower or brush my teeth; I knew not to do that. The cops arrived and told me I would have to call pg. county police because it was out of his district. He got over to my house in like 20 minutes. We called pg. county police and we had to go up there to get the statement taken and everything. We got up to the station around 3:30 and the officer arrived at 5:00. At 5:35 I started writing my statement, it took me two hours to do this. The officer called me selfish because I didn’t perform oral sex back on Banky. After the questioning, he told me no isn’t enough to charge him with rape, he said I would have had to resist more and that there might not be enough evidence to charge him. After all the shit I’ve been through that night he might still be able to walk free. He took me to the hospital and that took about 4 hours, I had to get a rape kit done, which hurt so bad.  I finally got home at 4:45 Tuesday evening.

This whole thing could have been avoided. I should have sense that something was wrong; I wasn’t paying attention when I should have. First of all I should not have been drinking with men, which is something I swore I would never do but I did and I got fucked up in the end. Second of all when he performed oral sex on me I should have known that he want sex or oral in return. Just because I trust him it doesn’t mean he’s not like every other man. All men want sex and what man is not going to want something after performing something like that? He turned up the radio before he raped me that should have clued me in that something was going to happen. It was so loud that I don’t think his roommate’s sister heard me when I screamed, and I was screaming loud too. When he lead me to his bed room I should have told him no but I don’t know why I didn’t. Obviously he wanted sex; he knew he was going to get it that’s why he led me to his bed room. Right now I’m kind of ok. I still feel sick as hell. Last night I couldn’t go to sleep because I felt him on top of me. I couldn’t even sleep with the lights on. I would jump at every little noise. Last night I had a nightmare that Banky called me and said that if I didn’t drop the charges he would kill me. Then when I was going to sleep I saw him with a gun in his hand and that’s when I woke up from the dream. it’s like I jump every time the phone rings, he’s called three times today but my mom picked up, I’m scared that he’s going to come back and really hurt me. I can still feel him touching me. And my whole body is sore and I didn’t mean for this to happen.

I lay in my bed, with tears streaming down my face As haunting memories take back to that painful place Feeling his hands touch me Waking up to nothing, hoping these memories will just leave Always hiding from that something that’s never there Caring a burden that I can no longer bare Terrified to tell anyone About how my so called friend, did what he had done..........

  Jul. 30th, 2004 at 8:15 PM

Last night I didn’t get any sleep at all. Someone from his house called my house at 11:44 p.m. and hung up. It scared the hell out of me, I was in the guest bed room at the time which is across the hall from my room and I was scared to leave. It took me like five minutes just to go out and see what was happening. I checked outside the dining room window and saw that no one was there, it was a big relief but I still didn’t feel safe in my own house anymore. the little noises that the house use to make scares the hell out of me now, like little creaks and bumps in the floors makes me paranoid. it feels like someone is watching me and I just have this really bad feeling that something bad is going to happen if I don’t do something fast and quick.. But I have a feeling that it’s going to be one of his friends that hurts me not him. Last night I went to bed at 5:00 in the morning and I fell asleep around that time, I woke up again at 7 and checked the house to make sure no one was in it but my mom and sister; I went to bed and woke up at 9. Finally I went to bed again and my mom woke me up at 11. I haven’t been to sleep since but I’m just really tired, I have bags under my eyes, I tried to go to sleep after I finished typing my resume yesterday afternoon but I was too afraid of going to sleep, I’m scared that when I wake up I’m going to see his face again. It makes me sick just thinking about what happened. I called the detective to check up on my case but it turns out that it was transferred to some other guy and if I didn’t call today I would have never found out. I called again that day and they wouldn’t give me the number where I could reach the fucking detective at which really pissed me off. Finally I called for the last time and there was no one who could answer my question so I was transferred over to the detectives voice mail where I left a message. He is supposed to be back Monday afternoon around 7 p.m. now what I don’t understand is what’s going too happened between now and then? Fuck I don’t even know if they arrested him because it seems like no one is able to answer that question. Did they send a cop over to check the scene of the crime? I went into detail about where everything was and the position and what he did and where he put certain things after it happened. By Monday everything could have changed, he’s not that dumb to keep everything the same. Of course it’s going to make me look like I was lying and that it was just consensual sex. Which it wasn’t. The odds of me charging him with rape in the first place are against me. Damn he had to beat my ass for it to be rape and since I didn’t have any bruises, it’s not rape in their eyes, no wasn’t enough. What about me? Everything is on his side I don’t have anything now. It’s my words against his and by the time the god damn cops decide to get off their lazy asses and do something it will be too late. Honestly I don’t want to have to deal with this but in some sense it’s making me stronger. Finally because of this, I know exactly what I want to do in life. I’m going to be a registered nurse and work with rape victims. No one should have to go through this shit ever but it’s going to happen and I know that. Every two minutes another woman in the United States is raped. That’s not going to stop. I’m going to help other people like me. But first I have to help myself and I haven’t gotten to that point yet. I feel alone for some reason. Sometimes it feels like I’m going to break down and cry but that’s not going to do anything for me. my head hurts a lot and it seems like I’ve been getting frustrated with a lot of people, even my own dad and most of the times I’m not like that around him. I feel bad because I’m taking my anger out on my family and I don’t mean to do that.



 I don’t know I still don’t believe that this has happened. The places he touched me, it feels like its burning. My chest hurts and my back is hurting me worse. I’m really sore in my private area and swollen, it just seems like this is never going to end. Going out in public is that hardest thing ever. It seems like every man is looking at me like they want something. It’s like they are undressing me with their eyes and its making me sick. I went to burger king with my dad yesterday and there were three men sitting together and they were starting at me the whole time and when I walked by I felt so sick, I felt like I was going to throw up. I don’t even want another man to look at me again; it just makes me so uncomfortable.  Today I called the police back and I found out what little I could about my case. Nothing has been done. I even talked to the supervisor of the station and he said to his knowledge they haven’t sent out a cop to Banky's house and they haven’t arrested him. By now all the evidence is gone and basically there’s no hope for me now. It was already my word against his and now there’s no evidence on his part. Wow I didn’t report the last rape because of this reason. I didn’t think the police would do anything about it so when I finally open my mouth to say something look at what happens. Well I’m not going to let it happen to anyone else, this stops here and now.