18 Years of God Damn Bullshit: A Memoir

Betrayal

((TW// Alcohol mention, Sexual trauma recount))

I was a girl, newly 15, not yet a woman

I didn't know then I never would be one

It was the day they got married

A happy day to break up the endless string of lows and highs

I think back to what I wore constantly

The dress my Tia bought me

The tights

The flat-bottomed shoes I wore to my cousin's Quince earlier that year

My hair tied back in the half-up-half-down my mother used to do

I had done my makeup that day

Maybe I was too confident

Maybe it was because I had a new bra that made me feel older than I was

I blame it on how low-cut the front of the dress was

The dress I never wore again

Maybe I felt like the girl they always wanted me to be

Back when I still hid behind clothes and that veil of ignorance I constructed

On the way home, you put your hand on my thigh and I didn't say anything

I was scared

I let it happen

You said I wanted it

Was this real?

Was I imagining things again?

Did my paranoia finally drive me so insane that I actually believed you would betray me too?

My father

Technically my second one

The one I credited for raising me

You, who was there when we didn't have electricity or food

You, who took care of us when our mother left to live the life she never got to

Who took my brother and I in the red wagon every day of the summer

Back before you didn't have a car and we lived in homes that weren't ours

Not you

I remembered months before when you'd held me too long

You tightened your grip when I tried to pull away

Just like the others had before

I thought these same things then too

When we got home you were already drunk

You said you tried to save me a few drinks at the reception

But I was off talking to that girl who I wasn't related to, but knew through the marriage that had transpired earlier that day

We talked all night by ourselves

I never saw her again

I told you I wanted to drink now

I knew where you kept the liquor

In the pantry at the top

I'd stolen from it several times, hoping you didn't notice

You opened a bottle of red wine

My little brother kept coming out of the room you both slept in to see what was going on

Maybe he sensed it more than I could

I can't remember how much I had

I just remember I felt loose

Like I could forget earlier again and discard it to just imagining things

You said I didn't dance with you at the wedding

I felt bad and offered to dance in the living room

I still remember the song

"Hey now, Hey now, Don't dream it's over"

The rest starts to blur

It's you, pulling my bra strap

It's you, your lips pressed to mine

I pretended to be tired

I convinced you it was just that

You relented and went to sleep

Next, I'm running out of the apartment

Out of the complex

Sitting on the rock with my phone to my ear, beginning to sober up

Scared

This was too real

The police come

I'm sitting in the back of the police car now

I'm watching them talk to you at the door

I'm driving to the hospital

They didn't put me in cuffs this time

My abuela is there and I tell her everything

I call my aunt, and for the first time I cry because someone doesn't believe me

Little did I know, they never would

You got out of jail the next day, even though you confessed to everything I accused you of

They drop the case

I can never tell the whole story

But it gets misconstrued through the mouths of the people I call family

Tia

Tio

Aunt

Uncle

Abuelo

Abuela

Mother

Brother

I can never tell the whole story

But I'll never forget any of it