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What would you say was the worst thing to happen to you? How did it benefit you in the end?

I had a lot to chose from here, luckily most of the things are in the past though.  I landed on one truly outstanding moment of darkness and shame in my life.  I was 13 years old.  As a thirteen year old girl I was really the same person as I am now but pure.  I lacked the compromise that I have unfortunately accepted in many areas of my life.  I was an incredible fireball and just growing into my new womanly self.  And I thought I was in love.  He was my first real boyfriend.  I’d had the childhood type of boyfriends before of course, but all that means is holding hands at lunch and sneaking as many closed mouth kisses as we can.  This guy was different.  Joel.  I guess I can say his name after this long.  He was older than me.  It didn’t seem like by much to a thirteen year old girl but I guess it was a lot.  For some reason we were still in the same grade though.  I think it was because he had moved from California when he was younger and missed starting on time or something.  (Right about now you’re thinking "get on with the damn thing already" well I’m winding around it because I’m not really comfortable talking about it) 

Anyway, to move forward.  We were "in love."  He talked about how he wanted to be with me forever and how he could never live without me.  It was all very new and exciting.  When we had been together for 7 or 8 months (a long time at that age) Valentines day came along.  I had been out of town for some reason and had missed most of the day.  But I couldn’t stand not spending it with my boyfriend so even though I was exhausted, I went over to his house.  We were watching a movie in his room and we started making out.  This was not unusual, It’s what we pretty much always did, but this time he got pushy.  He was trying to get my pants off.  I tried to be sweet.  I put my hand on the wasitband to say not yet.  But he just pushed it aside so I tried to push him off, but he was twice my size so if he didn’t want to he wasn’t going to move, and he didn’t want to.  I fought and said no until he actually got them off and got his hand on me.  I guess at that point I knew it was futile.  No one was going to come and he wasn’t going to stop. 

When it was all over and I left I didn’t know what to do.  I didn’t tell anyone for a while.  He acted like he’d done nothing wrong and we were still together.  The worst thing was on top of all of the other things he used to say, he started saying if I ever left him he’d kill himself.  I put up with it for weeks. When I finally got the courage to end it people thought I was the bad one because I’d never told anyone what happened.  My friends were also his friends so he was always there.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, he started coming to my church and going over to my house.  One night he even asked my parents if he could spend the night, and they didn’t know so they let him.  I left home that night.  I coudn’t stay there.  I just walked around outside.

I really can’t say it did benefit me.  I mean, yes, I’m a different person.  It did change me.  I now associate sex with self destruction, It’s been hard for me to even get to the point where I can have a mature loving relationship.  I still feel like I’m a little bit less of a whole woman because of it.  And I always carry around this hate with me. 

Rambling aside, that is the worst experience of my life,

Crystal