when you drown your girlhood

young girl; sexualized and slut shamed

the garden of eden was taught to me back when i was playing in my grandmother's yard in '08, creating alternate worlds in my mind to escape the one i was starting to feel shackled in

nana only taught me the holy word. she did not want to hear about the strange men coming into my mother's house in the middle of the night, with evil lurking behind their eyes. her only focus was to save me from eternity in hell. my body is a temple. i must help my brothers in christ stay focused on their walk with god by staying covered up at all times. like eve in the garden, they might bite the fruit. and just like eve, the horror following the action would be all my fault

when i started growing curves at a young age, my mother did not teach me consent or how to remove body hair. she banned me from wearing leggings because of my body shape. every night when i cried about the kids who made fun of my hairy legs, she told me to quiet down. when my relative bought me bras in my size, my mother screamed at me for having them, claiming i purposefully purchased the bras in sizes too big for me. she claimed that i did not need to make my chest look larger than it already was. any clothing that hinted at my body existing warranted physical punishment

when i tried to commit suicide for the first time, my mother and her husband quickly created a story about how i tried to kill myself over a boy from seventh grade that i'd wrote about in my journals. they slut shamed twelve year old me to the doctors, claiming i was too boy crazy to cover up the fact that the suicidal thoughts were caused by the abuse at home. my mother's husband degraded me for being so attention addicted and slutty in the visitation area of the psych ward, telling me that the other "excuses" i had for attempting suicide were lies to cover up how i felt about the real reason this attempt had happened. out of fear, i went along with their story and stopped trying to talk

dating was not allowed in the house. whenever i said a boy's name my mother's husband used it as a reason to shame me for the apparent reason i'd attempted suicide. he would accuse me of sexual things when i was around other boys my age from the time i was seven. if i was talking to my boy cousin outside, he would randomly interrupt us to cause a scene to my mother about how i had probably been messing around with my cousin. i was naturally more sociable with boys when i was younger. i hated how my mother's husband would constantly sexualize every friendship i had with a boy as a child. i didn't understand why he was constantly turning everything i do into something about sex

at church i heard tale after tale of the horrors and unholiness of premarital sex, unequally yoked relationships, and homosexuality when i was in fourth grade. even as a child, i didn't understand why my grandmother and her friends would sitting around for hours talking about their hatred and deep disgust against trans people and gay people. they saw pure evil in being lgbtq that i could never see. there were never any legitimate examples of how and why being queer is so perverse, hateful to christianity, pedophilic, or worthy of death. to my young ears, it sounded as if they were just hateful to be hateful. because a book from many years ago told them to for no good reason. god's original plan for creation suddenly made no sense. i stayed silent and accepted the things i was taught to avoid controversy

my mother's husband started physically violating me when i was six. by nine years old i knew it was abnormal. he would reference his private parts and start fights with my mother over how i wanted to see them. i would deny every sexual action he accused me of just to get punished anyways. by eleven years old he forever petrified me and my mother punished me for it. we never brought it up again until i screamed at my mother about it over the phone eight years later

when i was in fifth grade my mother and grandmother set the rules for me with help of the church's youth group. no holding hands until after graduation. no sex before marriage. no being alone together. no dating until seventeen. violence was committed against me repeatedly by the same boy in high school. i choked on my own blood trying to keep it a secret for years because i was terrified of being punished. once i was at rock bottom, i confided in a church friend who decided to give me an all too familiar spiel

once again, i heard the story of the garden of eden. kissing on someone and exploring their body with consent was compared to eve eating the fruit from the tree and causing the catalyst for the damnation of humanity. after a conniving woman corrupts her purity by enticing a man through promiscuous clothing or by giving in to a man's repeated requests, he is useless to her future husband

virginity in the only meaningful thing a woman can give her husband, that's what my grandmother told me. you'll go to hell for it and catch demons

the elders of my ex-church community were conditioning me to have shame and hatred towards my own existence as someone who has breasts and a vagina. every sickly sweet comment from old creep at church, about how i would make a great housewife one day, was meant to program misogynistic mantras and standards into my elementary school brain. it's okay to have sex and enjoy it without staying attached to that person for the rest of your life. i'm learning to see my own body without hearing all the words of my mother's husband and the boys who used me for sex. i'm learning to dress the way i want without calling my reflection a prostitute or a slut. reteaching your brain what is right and what is damnable is a long but worthwhile process i'm continuing to work on