N.O.

Chapter Four

-Luna-

The mall wasn't very eventful. Indiana and I stayed there for maybe about two hours. All it consisted of was me watching her try on clothes from every store in the mall, her taking a picture of herself, and then put the clothes back where they belonged. I didn't understand what the point was. When I got home, I noticed mom had made dinner and dad was still not home. He's hardly ever home though to be honest, it drove Mom crazy. I guess over the years she learned to get used to it. I know my Dad just wants us to have a good life, but sometimes I just want him home.

I barely ate anything, I just grabbed a small bowl of rice and beans, what's new, and headed up the stairs to my room. I pulled the chair out from my desk and place my bowl on top while I opened my laptop and went straight to Univision to watch a telenovela, which is just spanish for a spanish soap opera, right now I have been hooked on this new telenovela titled Like, La Leyenda. It's just about these 'too rich for their own good' teenagers who go to this prestigious boarding school for kids who are smart. The plot is that each one of them has their own background and each episode, or capítulo in spanish, follows a new character and their journey/background. I really started to enjoy it because it tackled important issues that teens go through nowadays. Before I knew it though, I drifted off to sleep.

* * * *

I'm lost in my thoughts thinking about the incident that happened almost two months ago. The incident that ruined my life. Thinking about how much I have changed since that day is truly frightening, because I know that I haven't changed for the better. I still don't know if I will ever be better. It's been hard trying to navigate things on my own. No one would understand what I'm going through. I can't tell my parents what happened because then I'd be an even bigger disappointment to them than I already am. It's not that I don't want to tell my parents, it's that I know they wouldn't understand or even listen to me about what happened. They would only hear what they wanted to hear. All they'd hear is rape, they don't fully comprehend what the word rape means. When they think of rape they think of sex, more importantly, sex before marriage.

We're Catholic. As Catholics, we believe that it is a sin to have sex with anyone before marriage. It wouldn't matter if you had been together with your significant other for over a decade, if you two weren't married then it would be wrong to have sex. I guess we believe God created sex as something that was meant to be good, something good to only share with one person for the rest of your life; it's a way of showing that one person you 'belong' to them. My question is, why would I want to necessarily 'belong' to anyone? My priest has said that it's a way to show your commitment to them and to them alone for life. I don't know. Rape to Catholics doesn't mean anything. All that matters is you have been marked. No one will ever want to be with you because you have not saved yourself or because someone else has already seen you. I guess the only part I can agree with is that it isn't as intimate with the person you choose to marry because someone else has already touched you. What do I truly know though? I'm not even eighteen yet. I can however agree that sex should be shared with two people who love each other. Not with two people who know nothing about each other and while the other is drunk out of their minds but they still say no and the other person goes along and forces themself upon the other. Sorry, I went on a little tangent there. I know I'm not wrong on that one though.

The main point is that my parents would not understand. They would simply kick me out of the house. Crazy right? For this past month and a half I have been thinking about possible ways for me to be able to tell my parents in a way that would help them be more understanding, but why should I try to help them understand? I can't force them to believe in something that they don't believe in. They should already understand. Everyone should understand. I should not be blamed. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't provoke him. Did I?