At 26, you’ll usually find young women thinking about how to look good and how to live to the fullest but I’m struggling with life at my age and honestly, I feel like I’m falling apart. I grew up as the typical church girl. My mother used to say a good woman will always wait on God, that your body is a temple and that my future husband was meant to find me clean, chaste, untouched, a virgin and I tried to hold on to that. I really did.
But life hasn’t been that kind. The men I’ve met before didn’t care about God or me. They hurt me in ways I don’t even like to remember. Men including my mother’s own friends and siblings; some of the things that happened to me weren’t even my choice.
I’ve heard people talk about sex like it’s something you give, but in my story it’s something that was taken from me, leaving me feeling like I was a rag.
And then I met him.
He was different. Calm. Respectful. He made me laugh without trying. You sneeze and he says “God bless you” like he really means it. A prayerful guy, talks about how he’d take good care of his children and wife; how he’d raise a godly family and good things that I never thought anyone else devoted their thoughts to. I couldn’t believe it. I kept thinking, “Maybe this is what I’ve been praying for. Maybe God finally sent me a good man.” I told myself I wouldn’t mess this up. I’d be better. I’d be enough. I needed him to stay forever…
On Tuesday night, I thought I was doing something right and when I went to visit him. I wanted him to know I was serious, that I loved him. So, I asked to use his washroom and as I walked back into the room, I took off my clothes, and stood there. I wasn’t drunk or anything. I just wanted him to see me — not what happened to me before, but me now. I wanted him to see that I could still choose to give myself to whomever I wanted. I was offering my body to him and only him and this time I was giving something that was always taken from me in the past.
He looked at me for a long time. I thought he’d draw close and have his way with me. I had waited so long to be with right person and to in my mind, there was nothing else I could offer him to bring us closer than my body. But after what seemed like forever, he shook his head at me and walked out. I don’t even know how to describe that feeling. I just sat down on the floor, naked and crying. No one has ever looked at me like that before. Men have used me, yes, but no one ever looked at me like I was disgusting.
When I tried asking him later, he told me clearly that he thought he was marrying a “good Christian girl.” That he didn’t expect me to do something like that. He said he remembered what I told him about my past and thought I had let all of that go. I told him I just wanted to show him love in my own way. He said it was wrong, that it made him question everything. That maybe I had become addicted to sex because of my trauma. I swear that nothing, absolutely nothing has hurt me more than the words he spoke to me.
I feel so empty now. Like I’ll never be clean enough for anyone. I keep praying, but even prayer feels far away right now. I don’t even know what God thinks of me anymore and I’m tired of being the one who’s always broken and trying to prove she deserves love.
How can I move on from this or even try to repair our relationship? Can I really ever climb over the walls of my past that are caving in on me? My mind is falling apart and I need to hold myself together, but how?
Help me fix this broken pen, please.
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