The following text is very disturbing and brutal.  If you are weak in stomach, mind or heart then please go check out someone else's writing - consider yourself warned and I make no apologies.

She lost her virginity at 15.  Oh, come on now, let’s be honest, it’s not like she put it down somewhere and forgot to pick it up.  It was taken from her, brutally ripped from her grasp loins.  He was a man/boy, 4 yrs her senior and the son of a close family friend.  She was raised as an ultra-conservative Christian and wasn’t allowed to date at this early of an age, but could hang out with this man/boy because they had practically grown up together and was, after all, just friends.  Besides that, his father was the Song Director for her church, how much more respectable could you be?  She looked at him like a big brother and he worked for her dad so who better to trust your daughter with, than this boy.  He talked her into skipping school one day and called in pretending that he was her father.  His voice was deep enough to sound like a man and it fooled the school secretary.  She hadn’t ever missed school, not even to be sick, so they didn’t know what her father’s voice sounded like on the phone.  She felt giddy and giggled when he picked her up at the designated spot.  She knew that she wouldn’t have a problem making up work missed and that her grades wouldn’t suffer even if she didn’t.  They went to Denny’s and got breakfast then walked through the park talking about where they wanted to go with their lives and what they wanted to be when they grew up.  Actually, now that she thinks about it, she did most of the talking and he most of the listening, which is the way it usually was.  Sometimes we get those 70 degree days, in January, here in Texas and they had certainly won the lottery in temperature on this day.  January 4th of 1980 to be exact and she was only 15 and 4 months old, the boy was 19. They ran some errands for the boy: auto part store for oil & filter, dry cleaners to pick up his starched jeans and grocery store for milk and bread.  They went to his apartment to drop everything off and she didn’t think anything about it as she had been to his apartment on many occasions and he was, after all, her brother/friend.  While there, they ate sandwiches and curled up, on his bed, to watch T.V. – she had done this before without any negative consequences for he was dating another.  She must have been tired, because she drifted off to sleep, that’s how safe she felt with this boy, in this bed. A bed that she had helped him pick out and assemble when he first moved into this apartment.  She remembers dreaming that she couldn’t breath, like she was under water or something and when she woke up, the boy was on top of her pinning her down.  He was removing her clothes and putting his hands where they didn’t belong.  She was confused, at first, trying to figure out what he was doing and why.  She struggled against him, lightly at first, trying to process what was happening, but he was much larger and weight 80 lbs more than she.  She started getting scared, saying “No, no” louder and louder as the light bulb went off and she finally realized exactly what his intentions were.  Shock and horror race through her body and she struggles harder and bit him hard enough to bring blood.  This is rewarded with a stinging blow to the face and a hand closing in on her throat choking the very breath out of her. She struggled still, twisting her body this way and that, trying to remove the steel fingers from crushing her larynx.  She remembers coughing and thinking that she really needed a drink of water.  She remembers the feeling of his weight on top of her, the way he destroyed her panties removing them (her favorite pair) and the excruciating pain that shot through her when he forced himself inside.  She struggled against him and against the choking grip he had on her throat.  She remembers thinking about the first man she ever loved, her father, and worrying about how the knowledge of what was happening would surely crush him. Then the boy is done and she remembers the fire inside her and the stink of his sweat on her skin.  To this day she can’t stand the smell of sweat and her current husband obliges her by showering every night, right before he climbs in bed, because he knows.  The boy gets up, throws a towel at her and says “get dressed”.  She realizes that she is bleeding and the only thing she has with her is a tampon.  She can’t bear the thought of having to insert the tampon, so she crawls to the bathroom and stuffs her pants full of toilet paper.  When she emerges from the bathroom, the boy grabs her arm rather roughly and says “load up”.  This has been a joke between them because he drives a big truck and every time she gets in his truck, he always says “load up”.  It is no longer a joke and the words sound harsh, brutal and disrespectful coming out of his mouth now.  He drives her home and even walks her to the door and steps inside to talk with her father.  They both work the night shift and as she is walking to her room, she remembers that they were discussing what needed to be taken care of during the shift that night.  She doesn’t care; actually she doesn’t feel anything, like the big ole empty black hole that has been torn through her soul.  She remembers thinking that she is probably going to hell now as she gathers clean clothes to wear.  She goes to the bathroom and showers until she runs out of hot water, the first of many showers that night.  Her father has left for work by the time she emerges.  She realizes that the life, as she knew it, would no longer exist, that she had “become a woman”.  She worries about the possibility of a new little life being created out of this extremely brutal act and how she would explain it to the only man she loves, her dad.  She decides to never tell her daddy because she knows that he would kill the man/boy.  Literally, he would kill him and worry about the consequences later because out of all his children, she is his favorite as she is the most like him in appearance and personality.  She is her father’s daughter!  The man/boy still calls her for several weeks after this and her parents don’t understand why she won’t take his calls.  They refuse to lie and tell him that she isn’t there, forcing her to walk out the front door and wander around the neighborhood for a while in all kinds of weather.  She doesn’t blame them for she now has a secret that they can’t/mustn’t know.  It caused her to grow up faster than she wanted and faster than she should have.  Several weeks later she receives a visit from her Aunt Flow and is relieved because now she can be assured of keeping this secret.  The secret that would eventually drive a wedge between her and her parents and she would come to wish this man/boy dead.

25 years later, when she thinks about this boy, she often wonders what happened in his life to make him do this and if she was the only one or if there were other young ladies who had their petals torn off by him?  She reviews her life and can see a black thread running through it that can be traced all the way back to January 4, 1980.  She wonders if the brutal de-flowering of her person in 1980 caused her to marry a very abusive man 4 years later and to stay with him 10 years.  Through black eyes, stitches and cracked ribs, through demeaning and degrading comments about how she looked and how she acted.  She wonders if the black thread caused her to think so little of herself that she would tolerate such abuse for such a long period of time.  Of him convincing her that she was fat when she stood 5’8” and weighed a mere 119 lbs, this could be traced back along the lines of the black thread?  The black thread taught her to hate her body and consequently herself.  For years she blamed herself for being in the wrong place, if she had just done what was right/expected of her she would never have been in the man/boys’ bed on that particular day.  She sees the black thread in the way she is with her children, over protective and guarding them like a lioness.  She knows that she would kill if someone took from them what was taken from her, if for no other fact than that they wouldn’t have to live in fear.  Yes, 25 years later, she still fears the man/boy and sometimes scans crowds to ensure herself that he isn’t there.  He never has been, but you never know and she knows that the wall she has built around herself is as thin as an eggshell and would crack, like Humpty Dumpty if she were to come face to face with him.  She sees the black thread in the bedroom as well and is thankful that her current husband understands and is as gentle as she needs him to be.  That he is willing to just hold her at night when she wakes up screaming to remind her that she is safe now and that he won’t let anyone hurt her again.  She sees the black thread in the way that she left home at 17 so that she wouldn’t ever have to step foot through the church doors again and she hasn’t.  She sees the black thread woven tightly in the way that she distrusts people, the way that she always holds a part of herself back, even from her husband, the one who understands.  She also sees the black thread in the wedge driven between her parents and herself as she was always guarded after January 4th 1980 and they felt it without understanding why.  She know that the man/boy eventually got married and had 3 daughters and she wonders if he has stayed awake at night worrying that someone was taking from one of his what he took from her.  She hopes that he has.