I stare out the window my eyes swell up with tears. I feel the most pain and like extreme weather it tears me apart. I start as I think of my grandmother, and it won't stop. My family, my past, my present, and all the memories I hold deep with in, they all tear through my mind and heart, slashing and slaying.
Blankness falls over me. I stare and beg to feel, to find the correct words. I feel a dangerous and deathly epidemic creeping up and infecting all my emotions.
I look in the mirror and my skeleton figure shocks me, I want to look away but I don’t. As my mind stares in the mirror it sees the thin, fragile body of a child. “Where are you little miss girl thirteen, who are you?” I ask aloud still concentrating on the mirror. Finally her face comes into focus, and I see her after so many years, myself when I am 12, just before I turn 13, and my life forever changes.
When I was young I hated anything that had to do with sex, breasts, kissing, holding, and intimacy. I rarely seen my parents kiss, and if I did I would cringe. Intimacy disturbed me in a strange way like when you have to look away from something and close your eyes. That’s how I was.
In the 7th grade, I had a boyfriend, Justin, who was best friends with my best friend, Felecia. One afternoon, after school, the four of us walked down near the Rum River damn. I knew what was about to happen, and I began hyperventilating inside. Felicia and her boyfriend, Mark, began French kissing. I was disgusted and scared. Justin looked at me, and then at them, and then back at me. I looked away. As I looked back towards him, he leaned in and tried to kiss me. I pulled away, and then said in a meek voice, “sorry,” as I walked away to the ledge of the damn to sit down until Felicia and Mark’s make-out session was over. The next day a flash bulletin was all over school, “Kenzi was tight.” Justin and I quietly broke up.
Then in 8th grade when I was 13 I became rebellious, and a different person. I had bloomed early, and was popular for the first time. The rebel and best-looking kid in my grade liked me, and I liked him too. I heard rumors that his previous girlfriend who was in high school had sex with Buddy. On Valentines Day night I decided to get drunk and sleep with Buddy, shortly after I had my first kiss. Losing my virginity was an awful, embarrassing memory, and soon everyone in school knew about it and made fun of me. This was hard to take at 13.
Then the next week, drunk, I messed around with another guy. As if that’s how people were going to like me, and accept me. I developed a no feeling attitude towards sex. And needless to say, I lost the boyfriend, Buddy, who I liked due to my shameless acts.
When I began hanging out with older guys, and real drug addicts, I would sleep with them too. It never felt good. I just wanted a friend. One time I was with this 28 year old when I was 14 years old. We were in his room getting high, and he soon led me to his bed. I stared at the ceiling and cried until it was over. His mother banged on the door, “Jason, she’s only 14, what are you doing? Jason, open up right now, she’s only 14 years old!” He didn’t care though. I always felt violated though I allowed them to, they disgust me now and have for many years. After much talking about these incidents with a friend I trust, he told me it was rape for an older man to have sex with a 13, 14, or 15 year old. His words were numbing, so hard to feel. This had never registered before.
The most significant event I can recall involving being raped by older men was when I went out one night with some people including two older guys, and I drank far too much. I was 15 years old at the time. And I awoke in a hotel room with the two men violating me in ways no woman should be let a lone a girl. I felt sick, and I ran from the hotel, pledging to change my life around. However my ability to detach from sex didn’t change. That learned behavior, attitude would come to ruin many relationships in the future, it would shatter hearts, including mine because I didn’t know how to feel about sex, I was so disconnected from it that it seemed frivolous, or no big deal, as long as I had a friend.
Many things happened during those years from 13-16 years of age that I deeply regret. I was trouble with my family and the law, I was on drugs and had a drinking problem, as mentioned I was promiscuous. I had a medical condition that was unknown, but I would become wildly hysterical and have to be hospitalized. Although Bipolar ran in my family, doctors were reluctant to diagnose a 13 year-old girl bipolar and medicate her. I see it as both making sense, and at the same time injustice to my family who had no idea what was going on with me. I had lost most to all of my friends, and I was depressed and suicidal for the most part except the times I was around people, quasi-so-friends getting high or drunk. No matter what consequence I had over my head, I didn’t seem to care. I didn’t value or care about me, and I didn’t value anything else either, including my life.
