CHAPTER 9: FILTHY

CHAPTER TYPE: EVENT

"It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me at first; why I felt the way I did about other girls. Not even the feelings themselves were clear to me, until just now, very recently. All these years, I had struggled with the idea of sexual intimacy, with my body in relation to other women's bodies, and how I felt about it all, without knowing any reason for it. But now that my brain is allowing me to remember, to feel, I can feel the filthy stares, the uncomfortableness of PE dressing rooms, the nonconsensual touching and violation of personal space...and I can see it all clearly now. No wonder I had trouble with pinpointing that I actually wanted to be with another girl instead of a boy, because my Friends were the ones who did these things to me, who made me feel filthy and disgusting, an inherently sexual being...and they ended up helping me destroy one beautiful relationship I had with a man, and feel powerless at the hands of my love, the one who would never ever hurt me. And I didn't even look at them at first."