Yet Another Story About Consent to Read with an Empty Stomach

My bones, my teeth, my skin aches when I think about the girl. I need to sit down and light another smoke.

The girl was young, but she felt a like derelict of a sailboat left rotting on the bottom of the ocean, where silence screams with its mouth shut and fish stare back at darkness with dead eyes.

The girl was tiny but life hadn't been very kind to her, and she had to grow up really fast even before it all happened. I guess you are allowed to be a kid only when people around you aren’t suffering as much. She thought the world to be a hopeless place.

So the girl met the man one night in a place that didn’t suit her, but she went there anyway. Nothing suit her, she thinks she’s that sailboat left rotting on the bottom of the ocean, remember? The man looked at her and knew he’d be the one to break her. He knew he’d be the one to change her forever. But he didn’t care. Because most importantly the man looked at her and knew she’d let him. And this was enough for him. In fact as it’s well known, sharks come to eat you alive when you are already bleeding. The smell of blood is hard to wash away, and even if the open wounds are invisible to the naked eye, she reeked of blood.

It was nobody’s fault. Technically. I mean these things happen, right? These things happen. A lot more often than they should. Even to this day she thinks if she hadn’t accepted the ride home. But the past isn’t made of ifs, it’s only made of decisions that make the present what it is.

The girl accepted a ride home. The girl died in that car. The girl was never the same after that car. Those hours felt like an eternity, yet she has a detailed imagine in her head of what she did in the main time. Their breaths clouded the window and she started to draw patterns with her fingers. She thought about the colours of the night, but she couldn’t find any color. She could only see the lights of the city pulsing in the distance and she decided that she’d count them until it was all over.

The girl walked out of that car a woman, not because that is how you become a woman, but because that day she realized she could never, ever be loved. To be a woman, she told herself, was really painful. Something was required of her suddenly, something she never wanted to give to someone.

And I saw her standing in the snow a couple of days after, watching dead eyed the cars go at the traffic light. Once that snow storm was inside her, something so pure and rare, but at that point only winter stayed and it stopped snowing. It never snowed again.

To give away what we most value teaches us about who we are. And God, she misses the snow. The snow made her happy.

The woman, once the girl, picked up all the pieces, made lemonade out of all those lemons, and waited patiently to leave that place for ever. She had found the voice inside her that told her to just go on.

A couple of abusive boyfriends after, she knew it hadn’t left her. The ride home. You fall into a pattern only when you are not on the other side, you are still stuck in between.

She chose to sleep alone for a number of years, and somewhat this made the woman happy.

So the woman has no man in her life. She doesn’t want a man. She often thought of that burning feeling she experiences in the middle of rush hour, she thought a lot of how she is always somewhere else at parties, drawing patterns in her head, she feels that the floor disappears from underneath her too many times a day. And she wants to fix it. Before she lets anyone in. This time she’s got to get it right, or it’ll be too late for both the woman and the girl. She needs so bad to give the girl another chance.

The woman doesn’t think to this point, it could happen all over again. She treats everyone the same, she doesn’t care about their gender. Isn’t this equality after all?

And here comes the other man. Attached to that Wikipedia page that explains how girls that were abused once are most likely to be abused again.

Is this a sick joke? Some awkward sense of humor I don’t get? Is this a nylon string wrapped around my arms, cutting through my veins? I walked for miles and my feet bleed. Why this again? Why this again? Why this again? Why this again?

What happened before means nothing, how he got in. He broke in. She didn’t accept a ride home this time. She didn’t accept the offer of a drink. She didn’t even accept some shitty cup of coffee. All the woman remembers of that afternoon even though is so close by, is that she didn’t want to let him in. He pushed her and walked through like he owned her. She didn’t want to kiss him, she said no several times, he grabbed her head and stuck his tongue in like it belonged there. She didn’t want him to undress her, in fact she was still half in her clothes, like it didn't matter if her skin was cold.

Maybe he didn’t get it, she meant no? It’s true she didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, she just kept saying “I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to.” Perhaps it wasn’t clear?

All the woman remembers is in the struggle, while she fought, she realized she couldn’t win. So she turned around. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn't want him to see her face, she didn't want him to see her drawing patters on the sheets.

All the woman remembers is she felt a girl again. See something hit her, a realization. For this long she always thought it had been her fault, what happened to the girl. The girl let him do that to her, the girl made her a woman. She didn’t say no, she didn’t say anything. So it hit her.

The roots of what NO means. NO has the value of the snow storm that used to happen inside her. NO is the chance she has to be loved one day. NO is the hint of trust left in her. NO is the comfort of her home. NO is her dignity, NO is her fight, NO is her chance to make this right. NO is my chance to be whole again.

The girl is alive, although it's hard for her to breathe, she tells the woman she turned the snow into ash when she decided to never tell anyone. To keep the silence. To never tell anyone about how she said NO.

The girl tells the woman she wants to feel someone’s touch again without nausea. The girl tells the woman she wants to know what an orgasm with someone feels like. The girl tells the woman she wants to grow up properly and be a part of her.

The girl tells the woman to never forgive, to never forget what NO means. She accepted a ride home, not what he did to her.

The girl tells the woman she said NO. Let them know I said NO.

The woman stands up and starts to scream: “I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no.”

I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no.