What Were You Wearing? | Teen Ink

What Were You Wearing?

March 26, 2021
By Anonymous

"Well what were you wearing?"

The question I hate so much

I hate the answer 

They expect shorts 

Too short

Showing my butt

A shirt

Too tight

As if there was even anything too expose

The dance team uniform 

That 13-year-old me wore

Did not seduce anyone

That grown man

A teacher

A stranger 

Didn't want to 'do it' with me

He wanted to cause harm to a little girl

I just happened to be that little girl

The seventh grader who laughed too long with her friends

Who had too rush to change

The last one left

And the one he backed into a corner

It wasn't me he liked

He didn't even know me

I was just a girl in the junior high 

He didn't choose me 

Like fruit picked off a vine

He found me

Like a child who picks up the first fruit that falls

After shaking the tree

He wanted my innocence 

What I wanted to save for my husband

I had learned about sex 3 days before

I'd known the 'birds & bees'

That babies came from sex

But I'd just learned how sex worked

After being shown those photos

Of genetalia riddled with STDs

I was appealed by the thought of sex

But now I was repulsed by myself 

The child who'd experienced it

Who had to walk down the hallway to the cafeteria 

As though nothing had occurred 

When in reality

My reality had just been flipped on its head

So, No, it wasn't what I was wearing 

It wasn't my fault 

I

Am

Not

The

Problem



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