It was a sexual assault, but we can't get into specifics.

The boy I thought was my boyfriend pushed me to the ground. He took my clothes off, and I lay there with no body to speak of, just a flat board of skin and girl bones.

Forgiveness can be very hard, but not impossible....each victim/survivor in their own way and time can forgive, and the forgiveness is really more for the victim/survivor that it is for the abuser.

[Referring to rape] It already is bigger than everything else. It lives in front of me, behind me, next to me, inside me every single day. My schedule is dictated by it, my habits by it, my music by it.

When abstinence curricula contain information about sexual abuse or assault (though they often don't), the message is similar: The onus of preventing sexual assault is on girls, not on men.

The silence was killing me.

And that's all there ever was. Silence. It was all I knew. Keep quiet. Pretend nothing had happened, that nothing was wrong. And look how well that was turning out.