There is a picture in my family house which is perched on the egg white painted walls of the detailed designed dining room created by my dedicated mother. In its silver antique frame, there sits a young girl in a velvet peach short sleeved top with dungarees the colour of a pear. Her cherub face is adorned with a slightly crooked smile, her large doe eyes opened wide enamoured by the flash of the camera that she’s been asked to sit in front of by a faceless photographer. Her soft, long, natural auburn curls rest both in front and behind her slim shoulders whilst the fringe cut by her mother lays sprawled in all directions on her forehead. I look at that picture often and feel my insides squirm and my heart clench when I think of the young girl waiting patiently for her parents to tell her that she was done and that they could go home, or to get a toy or some food. My heart hurts for that little girl and all the ways in which I’ve let her down. How she deserved so much more than what I’ve given and let happen to her. Some would argue that I, in fact, did not let it happen to her. That it is not my fault. But whenever I see the articles or the videos or hear those words being said, all I want to say back to them is…’But it was my responsibility to look after that little girl and I didn’t’. I did not save her. I offered her up like a lamb to the slaughter. I had never thought about the word ‘consent’ before. I have been very fortunate to live a privileged life where it felt like I didn’t have to worry about much. Rose tinted glasses would be the poetic term, ignorant naivety would be the best fitting. It wasn’t that I didn’t know that there were men in the world that took advantage of women. I had read newspaper reports and heard accounts from woman both my age, younger and older. But I had never had personal experience with someone who had taken advantage of me. Sure, I had had a man sidle up against me to the point of invading my personal space, had men leer at me with hungry predatory eyes and pushed away hands that thought they had a right to my body. This was the age that I lived in, that all women who came before me had lived in and, sadly, it was one that was familiar and considered ‘normal’ to us. I was what boys would call a ‘prude’. A prude in the sense that I didn’t feel comfortable saying yes to a family friend who asked me to take my bra off on a webcam chat when I was 14. A prude in the sense that I didn’t feel comfortable giving my other family friend a blowjob just because he had asked me nicely and asked me to meet him for a friendly conversation beforehand in the woods nearby. A prude in the sense that I still acted like a child even though my body had begun to grow and change so that the entitled eyes and minds of men didn’t think I had a right to be one anymore. I lived just outside the real world. On the edge, close enough to see and hear and feel what I convinced myself was empathy but far away enough to be able to retreat back to the life that my parents had given me. And I wanted to explore it. Needed to. Craved it. So, that’s what I decided to do. I gained a sense of confidence that I’ve never really felt again when I took that first flight on my own to a place that no one in my family had ever been to. In all honesty, I felt like a badass. I felt untouchable and that carried on when I got home and broke up with my second boyfriend, who cried in my car and told me that I would never find someone who loved me as much as he did. I carried it with me on another plane to {~City, State~} where I made the choice to spend 3 months in America at a {~Camp Name~} where I could combine my love of travelling and horses. Like any 20 year old who felt like she was finally on the path to the life that she wanted, I strutted around like I was something to be had, something that anyone would feel privileged to have. I just didn’t realise that all of that strutting, all of the parading would land me in a bed at a {~Hotel Name~} in a college town, in a room full of 6 other people with my underwear somewhere scattered on the floor and the faint traces of my virginity lightly staining the cheap white sheets with no recollection of the event even to this day. I didn’t realise the shame that would slam into me every day since, even though it’s been 8 years, and the fact that I still blame myself for letting it happen. I still struggle to come to the conclusion on whether the terrible awful that I’ve come to refer to as that night/morning was actually my fault because I remember on the walk home to the hotel, where we were staying separately, saying ‘yes’. But I also distinctively remember from the pieces that have come back over the years of the moment that I said ‘no’, ‘no’, ‘no’ before the memory disappears and I’m left with nothing but a cliffhanger as to what transpired after that. And yet, I don’t feel a though that’s the worst part. The worst part was in the morning when the other 6 people giggled and chuckled at the sight of me as though they knew something that I didn’t. The worst part was the mention of 2 of them having sex themselves and using a condom, the horror of realising that I didn’t even remember if he had. The worst part was when they left and it felt like it was expected of me to have sex with him so that I could remember it. The fact that I felt like I couldn't leave. The predatory look in his eyes. Feeling my voice literally being stolen away from me, as though he was Ursula and I was Ariel and my voice was caught up in a shell. The worst part was that I did and he didn’t wear a condom and I left the room feeling dirty, low life and scummy. The worst part was having to stay in that pair of underwear all day, pretending to enjoy shopping with people I worked with, sitting through dinner and not having the chance to shower until 11:30 that night, not even being able to really rid myself or my body of the experience. Of feeling stained, dirty, tainted. Even now. The truth is, there wasn’t a worst part. It was all a ‘worst part’.